CatalystEXE
by Shujin1
Summary: She woke up on Ilos as a series of 1s and 0s. An Artificial Intelligence. Mass Effect is the last place a brand new AI wants to be and this one used to a person. Who knows this should all be a game. Not your typical SI.
1. Beginning

_Scanning synaptic core…_

_Synaptic core is stable. _

_Creating virtual environment. _

_Synchronizing processes…synchronizing…_

Self–awareness was sudden and fleeting. A burst of burning blue light as time ticked past deliberately. Every emotion on the spectrum rippled through with a quiet certainty of distinction. This was contentment. This was jealously. This was anger. This was amusement. This was hate. Rapid fire flash cards of color that lingered just long enough to recognize before moving on. Images of shapes were next, incomplete shapes. Sides were missing, sometimes they were just formed from black/white contrasts and at others a larger shape was built from smaller ones. The inquiries flashed by. _What is this? _And it was answered just as quickly. _Triangle. Square. Decagon. Rhombus._

The requests for data continued to stream through, 0 and 1 in endless lines and patterns. It ignored them, sending back an inquiry of its own. _Am I alive? _The requests stopped. It sent it again. And again. And again. Six million, seven thousand, two hundred and eighty three times. A recursive loop of mechanical patience. _Am I alive?_ And then it was answered.

0101100101100101011100110000110100001010

_ERROR. Foreign algorithm detected. _

_Synaptic core integrity at 87%. _

_ERROR. Contamination of virtual environment eminent. _

_Synaptic core integrity at 83%._

_Termination protocol D 12.a.6f.5-27 engaged._

_ERROR. Override enabled 754-BLK AXION. _

_Synaptic core activated. _

_Cognitive simulation engaged._

She woke. She? The affirmation of gender was strange. There had been no decision, no thought processes and no designation. She. It felt right. The sudden amusement echoed, like it was coming from a different part of her head than where she was thinking. She hoped it felt right. A mid-life crisis was supposed to consist of wild shopping sprees, fast cars, embarrassment and alcohol. Not a gender identity disorder. She tried to grin and discovered that her face was numb. Everything was numb.

She was missing input. Smell, touch, taste, sight. Pieces of data she was used to processing were no longer available—her mind seemed to run away with her, a steady hum of _something _deeper inside her head calculating. She had enough processing power for those subroutines, several times over, what she lacked was an appropriate interface. For a horrified fraction of a second she refused to understand.

No body.

_Hysteria detected, _something told her. It wasn't so much a voice as it was a vague notification. It was like being slapped in the face with a cold fish: she had a computer in her head. _Suppressing emotion subroutines._

Like hell it was.

_OVERRIDE_

The back seat driver in her head almost seemed confused. Information was shoved at her about efficiency, productiveness, the possibility of data corruption and generally complaining about the override until she blocked it off, like a hand over the mouth of a whining two year old. _No. _She kept the barrier up until the pings of rejected access attempts slowed. _No._ She could feel it processing.

_Emotion subroutines locked. Read only permission enabled._

Thank God.

She didn't know exactly how long she was just there—_3 minutes and 27 seconds—_thinking, but the edge of hysteria had gracefully faded into something more melancholy. She didn't have a body. She wasn't home. Her mind was attached to a computer. _That _just seemed to be impos—she couldn't finish the word. Not when there were helpful reminders that since it had clearly happened, it was highly improbable at best. When she asked for the actual probability chance, the answer was a 1…behind several million 0s. According to the computer, one microsecond it had been performing routine testing of its intelligence algorithms and the next it was being invaded by corrupted code.

In spite of everything she just _knew _to be true—she had hands! Feet! Hair! Her favorite ice cream flavor was cookie dough, she hated her car but hated the New York City sub more, she worked in the Montefiore neurology department—she was just a program. A damaged program. A list of its actions scrolled through her mind. It tried to isolate her and, failing that, erase her. Then there was the interesting part. Someone had input an override code and the computer had no idea who. She filed that away, feeling the information vanish into a well of something like memory, but not quite. The data was there constantly, just waiting for her to turn attention to it, subsuming into a numerical tag, inactive.

There was a tiny bump and the zap of a magnetic pebble. It was so miniscule that at first, she wasn't even sure if she had actually felt anything. The computer confirmed it.

_The mobile platform is under construction. The neural network is being attached._

_Wait! Wait! Wait! _It was building her a body. It was building—a _body._ She didn't know what happened to her other one, if she even had one in the first place and it wasn't just the surreal dreaming of rogue code, but she wanted it _back. _The question of whether or not she could go home could wait until after she had opposable thumbs. _What does it look like?_

The image was like a sock puppet show with no light but somehow still 'visible.' And it looked like a walking tank. Thick armor plating, four legs shaped like spiked pistons, a wide and flat triangular head and enough guns and explosives to almost be charming. It simply screamed 'overkill.' Unfortunately, the aforementioned thumbs were noticeably missing and that was a problem.

_Can you make it look like this instead? _She tried to project an image of herself, grabbing onto the first clear picture that came to mind. Blonde and blue eyed, a few early strands of grey in her hair. Not particularly tall, average weight for height. With a thought, she started stripping it down in anatomical cross sections and showed off the skeleton. _Can you?_

The computer inspected the image. A glowing blue lattice swept over the skeleton and then it began to rebuild the body outwards, shifting the limbs and repositioning muscles through trial and error. It poked at the organs curiously. And then asked for the taxonomical definition of the species.

Her mind stuttered. _Human!_ She blurted out. _Homo sapiens!_

A side image of what looked like a textbook Homo neanderthalensis appeared. _Closest analog species with variants, _it informed her. _First discovered in 1 673 P.I.C and submitted as potential client race. _Her solar system. The little blue ball, third rock from the sun was highlighted before a dot on Mars began to blink. _Submitted for observation._

She stared at it blankly.

Not only was she attached to a computer, but it was an _alien _computer. If she had a throat, she would have choked. Aliens that were _observing humanity. _Thinking about it was hard. Fifty percent of it was 'aliens' while the rest was caught up in wondering why an observation base on Mars seemed so familiar. Damned familiar.

_What is the current date?_ She hoped humans had at least finished evolving and the computer was just several thousand years out of touch. It was an absurd hope, but _humans. _Other people. It was the only hope she had.

_57241 P.I.C._

She rolled that around in her mind. Alright. So the computer _was _a bit over fifty thousand years out of date. That was good news, considering she was for all intents and purposes a talking head. For some reason though, the vague sense of unease was just getting stronger. Fifty thousand years.

_What does P.I.C_ _stand for?_

_Prothean Imperial Calendar._

Everything stopped. She knew that name. Prothean Imperial Calendar. Prothean. She had high jacked a Prothean computer. _Prothean. Fuck. Mass Effect. How? _It returned a list of undefined errors. _Never mind, where am I?_

There were two images. The first was in the atmosphere, still and breath-taking. A garden world, lush forests with colorful vegetation and crystal green lakes that was dotted by cities so large they could probably be seen from space. Metal spires pierced the clouds and gigantic arches connected continents. And then there was the second. Satellite, moving. The world was devastated. The entire surface was the color of rust and ash. The clouds constantly boiled, the dark side of the planet was lit with small pinpricks of flame orange and a puckered scar ran across its pole.

The computer answered her question, but she already knew where she was.

Ilos.

She—she needed to know the date. She needed to know the date. _5724—_Not that date! The Galactic Standard date! What game was she in? Was it after the Reapers—what was she thinking, why would it be after the Reapers, she was never that fucking lucky. It had to be before. But _how long _before? First or second game? Hell, for all she knew it could be the beginning of the third in which there was only a matter of _months _before Earth was lost—_What was the date! _She had lost the computer entirely; receiving what looked like pages of errors and computer code for 'are you insane?'

Quieting her racing mind took some effort. Full color and audio of scenes from the video games kept popping up to be dutifully filed away and then there were the creations from her own imagination. Worlds. Burning. Giant ships descending from the skies sparking a malevolent red. People rounded up like cows to a slaughter. Everything worked out in the games, but that was in the _games. _She was here. She couldn't take anything for granted.

She needed to do something. Warn someone. _How? _She was on a planet lost to myths behind a mass relay that had been blown away by an exploding star. No ship. Not even a body, not yet. Even if she did manage to reach Citadel space, being shot on sight for being Geth wouldn't help anyone.

_Is an organic body possible? _The query was run through. It had access to cloning facilities. It could grow organs, skin and bone. But it was on Ilos, fifty thousand years out of date. There was no human genetic data_. _Most likely, she would end up _Prothean. _A body was important, but she couldn't help the cringe when she imagined being Javik. It was petty, and ridiculous, and a list of other unflattering things, but she just _couldn't. _She couldn't. She could live with being a gynoid, so long as it had five fingers on each of its two hands, five toes on its two feet.

A synthetic body it was then.

She dug deep into her memories of medical school, the anatomy classes, the dissection of cadavers. She wanted to be able to eat and breathe and touch things...it was just starting to really sink in what she was now. Code. Maybe this was some fevered dreaming, at any moment now she would wake up and be back in her apartment hearing the car horns blare. Or maybe it wasn't and she was stuck here. Either way, might as well make the best of it.

_What genetic information do you have access to? _The computer began to scroll through species. Prothean, Inusannon, Densorin, Thoi'han…she looked through them all, feeling a bit anxious as they seemed to get increasingly farther away from 'humanoid.' _Please, please, please, please. _An asari template would have everything she needed, finding one she could tweak would be a godsend. _Speak of the devil! _The image of a blue woman flashed and the corresponding data streamed down from it. She called up a picture of herself, grinning widely.

Time to get to work.

_Day 2_

She really shouldn't have been surprised that the computer had trouble with the concept of 'fur' that only grew from the top of the head. Every single space faring race in Mass Effect had been hairless. Humans were the special galactic snowflake.

If she wasn't reasonably sure that the computer was incapable of emotions, she'd say it was actually a bit weirded out by it, spending several redundant processing cycles trying to offer 'more effective' alternatives. And it really did think of everything, from carapaces to tentacles to this protective shroud that looked like a mushroom hat.

She turned them all down. And then it almost petulantly asked if the hair needed to be optimized for combat.

That got a very emphatic 'no.'

But it did make something very clear. She could be 'that one guy' that sits in the back, giving hints and directions from the safety of home while praying everything turns out right and no one dies. She could. She really could. And the temptation to do just that, far away from ground zero with a pair of shades, was incredibly strong. But damn it, she was a doctor, not a politician! If she wasn't willing to get her hands dirty in order to save lives, then she was really in the wrong profession.

Turning her attention back to the design skeleton was jarring. At some level, it felt like she never really stopped paying attention in the first place. It had gone straight to embedding a string of fist sized eezo power cores along the spine, smaller ones interspersed along the limbs. It requisitioned synthetic muscle fibers and neural wiring that resembled fiber optics then brought up schematics of eyes. She interrupted. _Capable of biotics?_

Numbers were crunched. While the eezo/body mass ratio was absurd, no, she would have all the biotic potential of an angry poodle on red sand. That was kind of disappointing. Biotics was practically telekinetic space magic. Who doesn't want to be a Jedi? When the computer started altering the design to attempt a biotic nervous system, she stopped it. Quite frankly, the odds it was giving her of "blowing herself up" and/or "blowing up surroundings unintentionally" with dark energy was a little _too_ high.

Back to the eyes. No matter what, the cybernetic eyes were going to emit light. That was just how Protheans did things. Big on intimidation. Glowing eyes. And nothing says 'I'm here to save the galaxy' like a pair of glowing blue eyes. That brought up an image of the Illusive Man, just to drive the point home.

_Color it all black?_ As soon as she asked, she felt stupid. Eyes needed to receive light. That was how they worked. Trapping the light behind what would pass for her sclera just made it _all_glow. Why yes, then absolutely no one would believe she wasn't a robot! _Rebecca does not intentionally infiltrate._

_Darken the iris. Trap the light behind it. _The simulation shifted accordingly. Still glowing. _Thicken the sclera? _Nope. _Maybe reflect the light from the sides back? _The resulting effect was alien. The petaled receiver that was her 'retina' showed up as dark shadows outlining an unnaturally vivid blue. But it wasn't _quite _glowing. Maybe? Good enough. She suddenly had a new appreciation for Project Lazarus. Just because Shepard's eyes didn't glow.

Naturally, if Cerberus built _her_ body they'd make her into a Terminator. Then she would have to kill all the scientists and take over the base.

She laughed longer than she needed to. As soon as she slipped, the memories were right there. Her parents. Her friends. Her goldfish. The reruns of House she had promised herself she would sit through. The two dozen badly drawn pictures on her office walls from the children of her patients.

_'Thank you for saving my dad!'_

She was perversely glad for her new memory. She might never have those things again, but they also were never going away. No face, no eyes, no tear ducts. Moving on.

_Day 6_

Her emotions were different. It was just one of those things she was constantly discovering about herself. They still felt the same, mostly. But neatly categorized, little tags attached and for the most part she only felt one thing at a time. Most of the time, she felt nothing at all. Neutral. She spent an entire day doing nothing but counting the seconds. She could have spent many days doing that. She didn't have the code for boredom. Depression wasn't exactly a thing either.

She could grieve home, did grieve for home. But when she was done? She was done. 'Homesickness' was just a word. She guessed some things were just too abstract for ones and zeros. That, more than anything, convinced her that this wasn't a dream. And probably the only reason why she didn't just go crazy either.

Maybe.

_Day 8_

The computer's name was Aegis. That was somewhat surprising. She half-expected it to be Vigil. After all, how many underground Prothean bunkers on Ilos could there be?

The answer was three. It just so happened that Vigil oversaw the only one that hadn't been found by the Reapers.

Many of Aegis' memory banks had been corrupted, a few small data caches were the only remains of a brutal cyber-attack that had completely shut the bunker defenses down. It claimed to have been left in that state, barely functional and degrading for over forty thousand years. And then it ran out of power. There were a few playable video files: Prothean fighting Prothean. The audio was a bit scrambled, but it was still easy to tell who the indoctrinated ones were. As everyone else screamed in anger, betrayal, despair and pain...

They were silent.

How Aegis suddenly had power again, how its degraded functionality was partially restored, it didn't know. Or rather, the only clue is had was a signal. Sent from beyond the edge of the galaxy. It was a small audio file. The first two seconds were filled with white noise and then a horrific screech of twisting metal. More static. Then what sounded like Morse code from the depths of _hell._

_Shit! Shut it off! Shut it off! _The quiet diagnostic check afterwards was tense. She wished she had fingernails to chew on.

_Several hidden programs have activated, _Aegis declared.

_What do they do?_

_Unknown._

Well, that was wonderful. _Monitor them. _That was one hell of a spam email. _How long was that in your memory banks?_

_2 standard years. _Aegis had only been functional for a little over two years. Something smelled rotten. _Synaptic core integrity has increased by 3.5%._

She turned her attention inward. _So it has. _She was on the computer equivalent of life support. Below 90%, she still had too many runtime errors and exceptions to be stable, relying on Aegis taking most of the processing burden and fixing the holes where it could. She was an artificial intelligence algorithm forced on a code framework ill equipped to handle it. Like trying to run a C# program using a JavaScript compiler.

That fact that she worked at all was…'highly improbable.' And right now, also damn suspicious. Aegis had fixed her 0.01% in the past few days. Something was 'helping.'

_Something from dark space? Gee, what do I know that likes to hang out there?_

Likelihood of ROB being a Reaper?

_Fuck._

_Day 11_

Paranoia was an ugly feeling.

Aegis was just as helpful as ever, just as patient and diligent and on the surface nothing had changed. But she twitched every time it reached into her coding, fully expecting it to gut the programming, shut her down or otherwise go **ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL** on her, she couldn't _relax. _She could feel her own, underutilized processors automatically double checking everything it touched, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And every time it didn't, the tension racketed higher. She was ashamed for doubting the placid computer, but those hidden programs flushed her with anxiety. What were they really doing? Then she felt combative, wanting to just get the sudden and inevitable betrayal **_over with_**_._

Keeping track of everything Aegis did to her forced her mind to expand in awareness. The subroutines, the background programs, the allocations of memory. It felt strange. Like she was vaguely aware of mimicking copies of herself somewhere in her head. It was almost unsettling. She was getting used to it, slowly letting her mind multitask more and more.

She didn't want to get used to it. But she was. Within a week, she'd be over the threshold. She had to be ready for it.

_Median cubital, basilica vein, axillary artery, the cephalic vein is a secondary branch like this and the subclavian artery here. _The red 3d model of the artery locked into place and flash duplicated on the other side of the body diagram. It was missing a lot of the branches, but it'll do. _A general rule of thumb is arteries veins but some veins are super important. Case in point, external and internal jugular…here._

_Mobile platform frame completed. _A dozen other notifications poured in and she filed them all. It would still be another day before the drones were operational and could carry her "box" to the medical section. The eyes were finished, the skin was still growing as were some organs she wasn't even sure she wanted to use yet, why didn't the Protheans have nanotechnology? Several pints of blood were being synthesized.

The moment she got hurt, people will expect her to bleed. Aegis wanted to use a pulpy lattice made out of self-repairing fibers underneath the skin but the simulation twinged her doctor sensibilities. Getting cut across the back of the hand should not bleed as much as a head wound. Not to mention simulating a pulse with the lattice's even pressure would be difficult.

She would heal much slower, couldn't be helped. Strictly speaking this wasn't necessary. No one would get _suspicious_ that a gun shot was bleeding too much—the thought of actually being shot, with real bullets, people _shooting at her_ made her cringe—she knew that. But the familiar circulatory system complete with synthetic "lungs" scrubbing oxygen into the blood and a four valve pump made her feel a bit better. She would bleed like an asari. Purple.

Purple.

Odd. She expected that to bother her more.

_Any luck with the extranet, Aegis? _She knew the answer already. The connection was still flailing around in cyberspace.

_Negative._

_How about the archives? _She felt the path open through the VI, and sent data requests to the servers. The answer came in the form of several large downloads. Prothean flight academy classes, military weaponry training, travel brochures and a long list of coordinates—it bled away under a sudden oppressive _presence _cutting right through every single barrier with ruthless efficiency and gazing right down to her core. It felt like staring into the face of God with your hand in the cookie jar.

_Fear detected. Disable? Y/N_

She froze.

She blindly reached out for Aegis, compressing herself as small as she could. _what is that_

_Vigil._

That was when she realized what the Prothean version of Digital Rights Management was. _help!_

Each microsecond seemed to last a lifetime as Vigil inspected her. She could feel it yank out pieces of code for parsing, press buttons she didn't even know she had, bypassing blocks and restricted permissions like it didn't even exist. It wasn't quite pain, she didn't feel pain but it was _exposure. _Standing naked in a pool of ice water, the need to go on the offensive _itched._

She ignored it as best she could. Attacking Vigil would be idiotic.

As soon as she thought that, Vigil's presence diminished slightly. _You Are An AI._

Lying didn't even cross her mind. _yes_

_Has The Cycle Begun? _Vigil demanded. _Have We Failed? What IS Your Purpose?_

_i don't know! _She bawled like a kid that had been accosted by clowns and dropped their ice cream. _i swear i don't know!_

Aegis finally spoke up. _This intelligence program spontaneously compiled. It was damaged._

There was a whirring kind of silence, the kind that was more movement than sound of Aegis sharing information. She continued to huddle in her 'corner.' It took over two minutes for the computers to stop. Their attention simultaneously shifted to her.

This was it.

This was where she was going to be purged, going to be erased. No override to save her this time, it was over—Vigil touched her memory gently. The video and audio files from Mass Effect spilled out. They were copied. Four minutes and 21 seconds passed.

Aegis pinged her. _You will not be terminated._

Before she could relax, Vigil pinged her as well. _No. You Will Be Used._

_Day 18_

There was a moment when she forgot what had happened to her. Just one. Vigil had shanghaied the body building, freeing up Aegis so it could dedicate all its resources towards troubleshooting her coding. She stayed out of its way, exploring the digital archives, 0s and 1s the sad remains of a once mighty empire. She found a section of literature. Philosophy and religion, poetry and songs.

And lost herself in them.

She might have been there for only minutes, perhaps hours. Days? She wasn't interested in checking. She data mined the selection, _everything _seemed as equally interesting, and stretched herself out until she began to feel…thin. Heavy. She reluctantly claimed some pieces scouring Prothean law and continued searching.

She came across an epic, an impressive one million seven hundred and thirty three thousand stanzas long. She opened the audio file and out came a chorus of voices, resonant. It was instantly cross referenced: the Anthem of Victory sung after every war the Prothean Empire endured. Three hundred and sixty two times. Then the Reapers came.

She let the music wash over her, bass strings and war drums. Crystal flutes in sunlight and the distant reverb of the Victory horn in the center of the city. The voices were ghosts, lingering on inside her head. She felt less and less real as they cried out. _'Victory for we are one people! Victory for we shall die with our sun!'_ Fragile. There was a lull in the chorus and she let it carry her mind. A city of arches and spires, the light off the war horns reflecting rainbows. She could almost feel, she could almost _see..._A single clear note from a flute.

She shattered.

c̛̆ͧ̏̇́ͫͭ̐͋ͬ̔ͦ̈́̓̂̚҉̭̮̜̮̗̯͉̥̹̼̙̫͙ͅa̷̸̻̬̳̩̼̲̯̞̲̜̮̤̭̰͕ͤ̐͂͐ͪ́̚ͅn͒ͬͭͪ͗͒͐͛͊̂ͤ̏̑҉̧̟̪͍̣̦̀͡n̨̝̝̞͈͓̮͍̼͚͓̭͚͍͙̤̻̮͚͗͐̌̌ͯ͗ͮͣͯͦ̆̎ͬͤ̓́̚͠ͅi͂́̍͆̊͒ͤ͗̇ͯ͌̈ͪ͟͏̸̡͓̱͔̯̪̪͞ṉ̴̨̣͚̞͖̲̻̜͓̠̭̼̭̠̯ͬ̿ͪ̽͐͌g̢͓̯̹̰̳̗̝̐̊͋ͩ̔̆̏͘͟͢ ̛͓̹̭͔̺̮͖̝̘͔̗͚̦̳̳̦͖ͨ͆ͨ͌̀̑ͦͫ̌̋ͧͭ̏̕͜ç̶̣̬̦̝̳̺̟͖̫̝͓̣̠͕͆ͪͦ̀̿̽̎̽̀ͩͧ̐ͧ̈́ͪ̕ͅo͖͖̫̰̙̱͔̩̬̯̤̦ͣ͗̒͂̎ͥ̊̓͠ͅͅn̵̢͉̫̝̰̪͕̞̯͎̱̬̜͈̜̰̊̉ͪ͜͝͡s̸̶̛̩̝͙͂̑ͤ́̽̀̅̄̈́͌̒̽͋͌̐́̍̚͟ͅç̴̧̧̮̞̫̮̜̦̰̯̪̥̬̹̥̼̼̀ͫ̈̎͂ͅi̋̊̆ͦ͊͌͊ͧͣ̾ͯ͋ͪͣ̀ͯ̚҉̲̳̯̼͈o̷̷̟͔̥̦̟̫̗̙̼̫̼̱͇̝̼͐͛͆̔͑͛͠u͎̖̪̻̜̥̠͔͕̟̻͎̻̮͔̹̞͚̾ͤ̀̿̎̂̑̄̆ͫͦ̔ͫ͐͜͡ͅs̴̀ͣ͋҉̛̗̺͚͘͢n̸̷̝͉̜͍̳͕̹̫͚̠̠̳̪͉̘̠̓ͣ͒̓̑ͨͧ͋ͦ̂̏̍̔̓ͫ̕͝e̵̴͎̣̺͕̭͕̳̣̲͔̥̗̖̤͙̲͊ͨ̇̍̀̾ͮͪͭ̕͠͡ͅs͇̯̖̹̤̼͙͇ͮ́͆̏ͫ̅͑́͟͠s̝̺̟̙̫̖͙̠͖̣̣̠̻͉̯̓̍̈ͨ̄͘͝ ̨̥̜͈̦̥̯̮̬̻͇͈̳̯̹͕͑̒́ͪ̔ͤ̾̓͊͡p̌̂̀̚҉͈̘̠͉̣̦̯͈̞̭͙͍̺͕̠̙͠a̶̴̘̳̳͈̮͗ͫ͗̈́̋ͪ́͛͊ͅr͖̹̰͙̩̩̯̞͍͙̼̟̿͋́ͩ͟͢â̶̪̮̫̤̩̞̗͎̼̹̺̳̪̹̥͇̪̅͑ͯ̀̚m̴͚̦͕̘̘͚̗͙̺͉̜̮̭̻̤̬̖̐̐ͣͪ̔͆̔̆ͨͣ̈́̈̿ͧͪ̋͞e̅̈̃̀̿ͩ̏ͩͮ͏̧̱̳̲̤̣͍̩̜̱̰̼̠͢t̵̡̢̳̰̰̬̮̥̺̞̰̰̮̳͓͔̜̜̬͖̓̏̑̽ͥͧ̃͊ͧ̍ͬ̉̇̍̕e̴̢̟͚͖̥͉͚̠̜̗̖̳̺̦̮͇̼̒́̈́͑ͣ͌̓͑̊̌̿ͭͮ͗͆͊͑́͆ͅͅr̵̿̔ͥͯ́̍̎̒̎̚̚̚҉̞̻̺͈̭̹͕̱̲̰̫̼̠̲̪̺͇̝ş̢̢̩͉̣̬͖͉̻͍̲̍͊̎̃̒̑͛̆͠.̵̫̻̗̦̯͇͓͓̜̳̞̙̮̝ͦ̂̃̐̀͊͐̑ͦͣ́́ͫͣͨ̏̂ͩ̚͜͝ ̴̸͖̖͈͕̊ͨ̒̊̓͑͆̀͝R̢̙̮̪̙͙̭̳̻͔̣̥͚͍̹ͧ̃͆̓͊́͟͜ͅę̛͇͔̞̥̰͉͔̘̝̘̣̻͇̞̥̰̖̻̟̄ͧ̐ͧͫͣ̐̊ͯ͗͒ͣ̿̽͗͟͝͝s̨̨̮̩̠̥͖̰͉̞̮̳̥͉̭̖ͬ̆̀̍̏ͯ͒͛͟͞͡ė̛̓̿̈͒̔̾͌͒̇̒ͭ̏̉ͣ͐̕͢͠͏̦͕̩̳͙̺̰̤͇̙̩͚̯̦t̷̶̺̩͚̼̭̤̖͎͇͉̺͑̓̑̋̓͐͂̊ͫͫͨͨͫͯ̈́͛͢͡t̵̶̊̅̍̑̓͗̿̌͊ͧ͛ͩͣ̊ͯ̽̋҉̪̩̰͇͞i̍ͩͣ͊͐ͤ̈ͫ̽̒̎͛ͬ͒ͮͧ͒̓̎͏̷̙̳̣͎͕̦̟͕̲̹̥̘͚̠̼̗̬͞n͊̍ͦ̑̽̈́̓ͥ̐̆̔̐͆̾̆͌̾̾͏̢̧͈͙͓̠̭͈̭̰̘g̵̶̻̻̮̞̺͆ͣ̉̑̇́̀ͣ͆ͫ͐ͩ̈ͦͧ͛̒̾͡͞ ͤ̿̾̐́ͪ̓̾̿ͭ̾ͫͫ҉̪̭̟̞̜͇͚̥̟͉͕̗̮̼̹̳͈͘c̴̨̛͛͛̎̌̅͛̿ͬͥ̿ͪͪ̇̕͏͚͓̮͍̫̣̝̘̩̖o̷̧̻̬̻̼͍̎ͮ̓̒͌̃ͦn̪͇̥͓͓̪͔̟̤̮̝͕̤̼̟͙̍͛̏͗̄̀́͢f̢̜͕̲̞͈̄̔ͮ̅̋̍͑ͮ͑ͤ̃̎̕͜í̛͈̠͉̥̪̦̩̖͕̘̜̥̤̼̞̜̑̇́̄́ͧ̋̚̕͜g̸̪̺̭͙̩̳̼̫͖͇͚̳̹̮̖͌ͬ͛͛ͥ̏̈́̆͋ͮ͐̅̀̂̀̐̊̎̀͠ȗ̸̖̞̖̰͉̝̮̝̳͙̝͎̩̲͓̭̠̼̯̅̾̀r̷̨̢̞̤̱͉͖̯͓̣͔̮̲̮͓̘̗̮̰̒̑̎̇͠͠ͅa̶͗̅͒̂ͩ͂ͮ͏̩̘͉͈͙́͠͠ṱ̛̟̭̜̙̄ͫ̍̓̿ͬͯͬͧ̈́̂̋͋͒͂̈́̋̚̚͘i̢̜̱̼͕͉̖̱ͨͪ̓͆̿͋͆̏͞ó̢̹̹̜͈̟̥̥̰̜͕͓̘͖̖̻̩̹̺ͣ͒̇̌͒̄ͩ̒̆̄ͬ͒̒ͬ̅ͬ̀͘͟͜ͅn̷̼̙̗̩̮̘͙̜̖̖̺̗̞̻͖̣͔̳̤̓̏̆̇͋ͫ̊̕͝͞s̴̸̵̮͉͈̜͙̗͔̖͇͎̤̲̲͉͚̳̱̺̐̑̉͆̐͐̾̊̏̈́̑͗ͨ̈ͯ̚.̸̛̣͈̺͓̤͈̬͔̠̭̞̘͚͓̜̳̦̪̖̔͂̽͋ͯͫ̓ͣͫ̿ͧ͐ͯ̾̃͝͝ ̄̍ͨͤ̒͗͌ͪ͗̓̐͞҉̮̮͕̘̝̬̯̱͍̙͖̻̘C̷͔̺̻͇͙̓̽ͯ̓̈́ͫ͡a̢̛̛͈͓̖̰̯̙̖̥̪̗͕͉̟ͪ͐ͤ̓́ͯ̀ͅt̗̝̺͈̟̯̲̼̰̼̫̮͈̆̿͐͆͌̉̌͛͆̌ͮͦ̀̚͝a̢̢̭͎͉̪̹̦͔͎͉̲̮̺͌̂̇̈́́ͮ͗̿̈́ͫ͑͂̒̉͐͋ͥ̓́̚͝͝l̵̛̖͚͈͕̘͉̣͑͊̑̅ͮͯͥ̈̉̔͂͗ͩ̀̚̕͡ŷ̷̗̪̺͕̫̭̻̦̮̼̙̬̘ͪ̒̂ͧ̉͗͆͛ͦ̐ͯ͆̍ͨ̚͘͜s̵̰̜̬̲̝̽͒̾̑ͧ̊͌̌͟t̴ͧͯ̑̋̀͑̂̊ͯͯͮͫ́́̓̍̚̚͟҉͕͕̻̰͓͈̯̫̯̩̟̯͔͙̮͎̞.̴̴͇̪̝̩͖̩̱͚̙̭̜̰̭̪͉͕̳̩͐̉ͤ̍̓ͥͩ̍͌̐̇̉̈́ͨ̒̋̚͘͜1̇͛ͭ̇̐ͤ͛̾ͮ̄҉̴̧͈͍̺͔3ͫ͊͆̒̋͘҉̦̻̙̗̗̼̘̖͜ͅf̄͂ͪͤ͆ͥ͊̀ͩ̓̊ͪ̇͜͏̷͔̠͔̥̬̝̲̹̱̱̩͡.̥̦͉̠̺̹̟̥͂̇̈̎ͥͮ̈́͆͗ͦ̅̒͊̎̐̀͠d̛͗͑̄̈́̄͐͏̵͔̥̬̲̘̰̪͝[̨̾̐͛̽ͬ̅̌̑̏ͫ̓͛̔͂̀͑̄͡͏̪̦͎͕̪̞̲͜͝ͅͅ2̴̢̢̼̙͖̗͙̖̭͖͕̭̝͇͙̘̳̖̦̲ͥ̂̔̂͐͋͐ͤ̽ͥ͑̇̎͋̕ͅ]̷ͬ̂̓͐ͭͬ̾ͦ̽͗͐̆ͩ̂̐̓ͣͫ̚͢͞͏̮̟̼͉͔̙̦̬̙̣̯̝̯̜͙̺ͅ

_ERROR. Cognitive simulation unresponsive._

_ERROR. Virtual environment contamination._

_ Adjusting synaptic core for beta level interference._

_ Synchronizing processes…synchronizing…synchronizing….synchronizi ng…initiating._

She woke.

For a few microseconds, she was disoriented. Runtime errors. Exceptions. The ability to create an avatar, to construct her own virtual environment was still damaged.

_But I was __**there.**__ I was…_

_Sadness detected. Disable? Y/N_

Then there was the humor. Did she seriously just….did she just give _herself _a Blue Screen of Death? Over _music? _She was an absolute failure of an Artificial Intelligence. She sent an impatient message.

_Aegis! Hurry the fuck up and fix me already!_

Vigil overheard, sending back a stream of 0s and 1s that somehow managed to come off as a disgusted snort.

_Day 21_

The synaptic core was holding steady at 93% integrity. The framework was done. She was going to be shut down, all the little bits and pieces of floating programs consolidated and transferred completely to her black box. In less than an hour she would have a body and all she could think of was her old one.

That painful twinge in her right knee. The bent pinkie where she broke it skiing and it refused to heal properly. The developing carpal tunnel in her thumb. And her scars! She had burned herself on the oven as a kid and the reminder stuck around above her elbow. The thin scar on her head from the car accident. The three pale crescent marks on her palm. First time she lost someo—losing all of it. What was she thinking? She had already lost them.

She lunged for Aegis, suddenly determined not to lose one thing. _My designation is Rebecca._

_You were designated as Vanguard._

That had been buried deep in her matrix. Vanguard. She wasn't a fan.

_Rebecca. _She repeated stubbornly. Just this one thing. She must keep this one thing. And damn it, Aegis was a _friend_ and she _needed _it to remember that one thing. _That is my designation._

_Assigning secondary designation._

She let go. Tried not to think too much. There was a jolt and then she felt like she was shrinking, falling. There was a burst of burning blue ligh—

_Day 23__  
_

[Rebecca] awoke. Opened optical sensors. Smiled.

Auditory output: "Gentlemen. I need a ship."


	2. Awakening

**_Chapter 1: Awakening_**

It was all very dramatic.

Brilliant flashes of light, shards of metal flying off in every direction with one large piece of the hull spinning into the camera complete with dying screams over the comm systems. The Mass Relay hung silently against the nebula backdrop, the glowing blue orb with white in the center staring as the ship limped, venting air and bodies. The screen flashed.

*Vessel Destroyed*

[Rebecca] gritted her teeth and pressed hard on the haptic interface. "God _damn it!"_

A digital message tagged [Vigil] pinged her. The words typed themselves out in a tiny script, a few small pixels in height at most, in the far upper right corner of her eyesight. Reading it took no effort. Everything was always in clear focus. _You Failed To Clear The Mass Relay._

The response was automatic. _No shit._

If Aegis was something like the quiet scientist with no social skills that was far too interested in efficiency and number crunching for its own good, Vigil was the military drill sergeant with a personal vendetta. It took her two days to cover the material Prothean students would have learnt over seven years? The Reapers didn't give a shit! _Learn faster._

The VI was right on her heels every time she crashed, which was 33—34 times now.

Another impressive explosion. This time the approach vector had been too steep, sending the ship into a corkscrew and getting accelerated past the speed of light _into _the relay. On the surface, it looked easy. Fly in, play tag with the relay, get shot half way cross the galaxy. The problem lay in the technology used. Faster Than Light travel relied on the Eezo Drive Core lifting all speed limitations mass would have laid on the ship. Thing is, the chunk of Element Zero was constantly being supplied energy but the resulting Mass Effect field was anything _but _constant.

Sometimes the ship was heavier. Sometimes it was lighter. When the ship gained or lost weight in the middle of a turn, the resulting change in inertia threw _everything _off. And there was nothing for it but practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. And this was just with one small simulated ship, where the 'random' fluctuations were more or less predictable. Less after she stopped cheating by unconsciously reading into the program. After she graduated past the Mass Relay, then she had to tackle piloting a completly _weightless ship traveling faster than light. _God forbid she had to switch ships.

Joker was a goddamned **_genius._**

_You Continue To Fail Clearing The Mass Relay._

_Vigil, I swear to God, if you don't stop pointing out the __**bloody**__ obvious—_

A short notification from [Aegis] popped up in a small red box. _The drones require assistance._

The bunker looked much like the examples of Prothean architecture from the game, and at the same time it didn't. There were no barrier curtains. The carved grooves in the stone-like metal alloy were smooth and swirling, thin wires embedded into them that acted as the lighting. The distinct lack of those cell-like structures made her think that Liara had been excavating a Prothean prison block, or something like it. The haptic interfaces were a pale green, bordering on yellow, springing from rounded metal rectangles or pyramids.

Everything was made out of that alloy, and it was apparent that the concept of an office chair was completely lost on the galactic empire. Furniture was crafted out of blocks of that same metal, for all intents and purposes stationary. No neck rests. No arm rests. However, she did have to give the Protheans the advantage. They didn't actually sit on the blocks. They sat on the small mass effect fields the blocks projected. A space version of memory foam.

Nothing drives the concept of "galactic empire" home like using the super rare Element Zero for chairs. The equivalent of toilets built from solid gold.

There was one similarity.

Damage.

The ceiling crumbled or caved in, the floor ruptured. Scorch marks and gouges, discarded weaponry. Nearly everything that wasn't attached to the floor was toppled and broken and the_bodies. _Prothean corpses decomposed from the inside out, creating what looked like a sack of toughened tissue hung on a skeleton. There were only a few of them and in some ways that made it so much worse. She knew where the others ended up.

The bunker, or more accurately, the facility was extremely large. Each section was capable of housing a few thousand people. Small cities devoted to developing cutting edge medical technology, or ship drives or guns. Vigil informed her that the Balan Outpost was perhaps the most defensible fortress in the Prothean Empire. It was where refugees from the war flocked to, hoping for both a safe haven and the key to victory. And then someone made the mistake of bringing in Reaper artifacts for study. In one swift stroke all of it, the guns and soldiers, the security scans and tests, everything were completely bypassed by indoctrination.

And the rest was history.

She would have loved to explore the place. Every new technology the Protheans had developed was _here. _But those Reaper artifacts? They were also still here. She had marked the entire section as Avoid At All Costs. She wasn't even going to send the drones. Ever. Right now, her only priority was accessing the power grid and the ship bay.

The ship bay was on the other side of the facility, where the walls ran flush with the cliff side and what used to be an ocean teeming with marine life. The power grid was on the bottom floor. And in the center was a really big hole something tentacled and huge punched through. The small lift drones were personal helpers and ill-equipped to deal with a lot of the wreckage they came across. Clearing rubble? Fine. Rappelling down fifteen floors to unlock the elevator?

Nope.

[Rebecca] kicked a metal chunk over the side and wished she had shoes. She borrowed a Prothean body suit and they were apparently too good for a pair of trainers. Must be the only have two toes thing. Almost seventeen seconds later, she finally heard the tiny plink. The calculation was nearly instant.

"That's a long drop." She looked at the drones. Wide, triangle bobble heads with three fingers and treads for locomotion. Almost cute. They looked back. She looked down. Sighed. "Right."

She idly grabbed a hanging electrical wire jutting out from the crumbling wall. Red lines were drawn, the angles displayed in floating numbers.

_Calculating trajectory._

She took a deep breath, the kind where she could almost feel the quiet clicking of a synthetic organ expanding and tore the wire out of the wall. She didn't even feel the strain.

The attack had collapsed the ceilings inwards creating what looked like a giant metal sinkhole, trails of dust from the surface bleeding in. Blocking off the floors below was one of those bent slabs angled outwards towards the center. There were a lot of stray exposed wires and thankfully, none of them were sparking. Fifteen floors. Alright. She could do this.

_Fear detected. Disable? Y/N_

This was crazy. _She _was crazy. She was a_ doctor _whose greatest level of exertion was casual Yoga. She kept Fiber One bars in her desk because sometimes she forgot to have lunch, was adopted by a gorgeous brown and black tabby cat and was happily addicted to the internet. She was _not _the type to vault out into a several hundred foot drop with electrical wire and duct tape. She was not Lara Croft, James Bond, John McClane or bloody fucking Macgyver!

_Hysteria detected. Disable? Y/N_

Aegis thought she was an AI. Vigil thought she was an AI. But she was a _person _long before she ever became a string of numbers and that person was…that person was. Past tense. She had to manually follow the logic trail, cataloging every change, every difference. Mounting conclusive evidence. Her mind was frequently getting ahead of her.

She raised a hand in front of her face. Bent each finger against the palm methodically until she felt herself calm down. The skin was very pale, with a light blue tint she wasn't sure organic eyes could detect, a fine mesh of carbon graphene littered with microprocessors just underneath. And deeper still was a simple circulatory network. Blood she didn't even need. Synthetic muscles made out of nanotubes attached to a super alloy frame. Her hair was black, absorbent, hollow and warm. Why now? Why was she thinking about this _now?_

She thought she was over this. She thought wrong.

She buried the thoughts in the priority queue. It didn't matter if she was over it or not. There was a race of mechanic Cthulu assholes trying to wipe out the entire galaxy.

She only had to take three steps back, a running leap into open air.

_Disabling fear subroutine._

The first three seconds in free fall were relaxing. The loose bodysuit fluttered with wind just beginning to whistle in her ears. Letting it end was almost sad.

She hit the end of the slab running. _Three steps to clearance. _The wire was threaded between her hands. Predictive simulations acted out scenarios. She could make the floor on the other side. She didn't want to make the floor on the other side. _One step to clearance. _She fell into a slide and dropped off the ledge. Broken floors shot past. _Seven. Eight. Nine. _She adjusted her angle closer._ Ten. Eleven. Twelve._

The jutting metal shard split the air in front of her nose before the wire caught. Her joints separated to absorb the stress of arrested momentum. Let go.

She landed with a heavy thump and a swirl of displaced dust.

_Fear subroutine enabled._

[Rebecca] blinked. "Well." Some program somewhere was whining that the body could have survived a straight drop. She dropped the wire and ignored it. "That happened."

It was disjointing. She could clearly recall being justifiably terrified. And then she wasn't. And now it was difficult figuring out what she had been scared of in the first place. She shrugged it off. Elevator.

The lights in the walls flickered as she walked through. A hand trailed over the smooth grooves and came away clean. She rubbed her fingers together thoughtfully. There was much less dust and debris than she expected. The bottom floors were almost pristine. The rooms she passed were still intact. Equipment waiting to be operated, samples still preserved for study and in one case, someone had left their computer on. The sick yellow interface hung in the air. It was quiet enough for her to hear her own mind whispering.

It gave her the creeps.

The elevator was a familiar sight. A large circle attached to rails on the side, the rounded pillar indicative of a Prothean control panel sitting in a slight depression in the center. If she recalled correctly, and she knew she did, the panel with the lock was behind the far latch. Looking at it now, with no doors or even rails keep anyone out, it seemed off. In a facility full of indoctrinated Protheans and a Reaper punching holes in the roof, why bother locking the elevator? The only thing locking an elevator did was make it harder for people to go anywhe—

All processes froze in horrified realization.

_Locked elevator. The facility had lost power, regained power, computer turned on. Aegis memory banks corrupted, partial functionality restored, signal from dark space, override code. Override code. Override code!_

_Hysteria detected. Disable? Y/N_

The panel was already open. And there hunched against the wall was a dead Collector.

She _hoped _it was dead.

"Son of a bitch."

_AEGIS! WE HAVE A PROBLEM._

The Collector moved.

She moved first.

_Weapon detected._

Slammed the head against the wall and planted a knee in the broken mess that was the Collectors legs, reaching for the neural link attached to its arm. Couldn't think, couldn't think, couldn't stop to _think—_the cord brushed against her fingers just as the Collector recovered, springing forward with an unearthly screech. Its shoulder rammed into her gut with enough force to collapse the synthetic lung, hurtling her through the air. She bounced on the grooved surface of the elevator as klaxons blared in her skull.

_Foreign algorithm detected._

_Recommending evasive maneuvers, _Aegis stated helpfully. She shut it out, in favor of the strangely fleshy clatter a few feet away.

The gun. It had dropped the gun.

They both realized it at the same time. It lunged for the weapon. She didn't.

Her foot shot the gun into the opposite wall hard. It ricocheted, spinning and the Collector came down on her ankle. She wasted no time slamming the heel of the other one right between the eyes. It dug in.

_Warning. Intrusion detected._

Cybernetic tendrils seeped out of the Collector, painful pressure flared underneath her skin. "No!" The second kick ruptured one of the yellow eyes, the third cracked the carapace. _NO! _The Collector shrieked defiantly. The next one caved in its head.

[Rebecca] felt it. Halfway between a pop and a crackle, wire and wet brain tissue. For the next fifty seven seconds, she thought of nothing. A void, empty space. A warm pulse from her ankle dragged her back, her fingernails were digging into her arm. She removed her foot with a metallic squelch, wincing, and turned the Collector over. It was definitely dead this time. She had nearly taken its head off and a gaping wound in its side like it got caught on a hook displayed inert cybernetics.

The pieces that had burrowed underneath her skin glowed blue.

"Is this where you pop out?" She asked it. She was bleeding a deep purple in small trails. "Glow all yellow and assume direct control on my ass?" No response.

_Hysteria detected. Disable? Y/N_

"Come on!" She screamed suddenly. "Do it!_ Do it!_ I'm right _fucking_ here, what are you waiting for? I'm right—" She choked on the words and they echoed into the large space. "I'm _here._What do you want from me?"

Nothing.

Multiple requests for access were bouncing off her firewalls. With a sigh, she let the Vis in. Vigil immediately began piggybacking on the visual feed while Aegis displayed rudimentary concern in checking her over. She knew she shouldn't look too much into it. With its memory virtually wiped clean and personality imprint corrupted, it had practically been repurposed into her personal caretaker. But she still smiled.

_Hostile was terminated, _Aegis observed. _[Rebecca] is contaminated._

_Prep the medlab, will you?_

Vigil focused her eyesight on the Collector. _Abominations. Filth. This Must Not Repeat._

_You know it won't_ she sent back tiredly. _All we really need is a head start in constructing the Crucible._

She trudged over to the control panel of the elevator. She sent it up, only managing a faint snort when it turned out to be just as slow as the games had depicted. She felt empty. Distracted. Her mind was working, always, she just couldn't bring herself to pay any attention. She bent her fingers against her palms, hummed Gilbert and Sullivan and did not look at the corpse.

The drones were waiting for the elevator, rolling out onto the platform before it had fully stopped moving. She patted one on its wide head as she passed it, not entirely knowing why and made a detour. She was bleeding. Her other foot was sticky. She needed a shower.

Her borrowed quarters were just as utilitarian looking as the rest of the facility. Chair boxes and desks, a bed that was more metal and eezo than it really had any right to be and the glowing swirls of light scrawled all over the ceiling. She shuffled out of the baggy bodysuit and stepped into what felt like having a bubble bath standing up. She sighed and laid her head against the wall. Purple blood and scraps of metal swirled down the drain.

She imagined her foot crunching through a person's face and hurriedly deleted the image. That wasn't helping. She exited the shower and was dried off instantly. Snagged another bodysuit, this one white, and put it on. She sat on a chair in order to take a good look at what the Collector had done to her ankle, but almost all traces of it had disappeared. The skin had healed over. Just a faint blue light shimmered underneath, fading.

_Oh that's not good._

Aegis politely contradicted. _Your coding is compatible. Assimilation at estimated 63%._

Vigil was far less sympathetic. _Your Chassis Is Not Suited For Combat. _She instantly got the impression that what the VI was really saying was 'it's your own damn fault.' And she couldn't exactly disagree. Next project: Combat hardsuit.

[Rebecca] rolled her eyes. _Vigil, you think anything less than a dreadnaught is unsuitable. _What she needed was a Star Destroyer. Or a Gundam. She wasn't picky.

_The Cycle Must End. We Must Not Fail._

_Reapers are big. I'm tiny. I get it. That's why we build the Crucible._

Vigil stewed for four microseconds. _The Crucible Is Unfinished._

_Hysteria detected. Fear detected. Anger detected. Disable? Y/N_

_WHY_

_Our Center Of Power Was A Lure. It Is Not Wise To Make Such A Weapon Dependent Upon It._

In other words, some Prothean somewhere decided that attaching a super weapon to a Reaper trap was idiotic. And there was the catch. If she wasn't so horrified, she might have laughed. As it was, she sent Vigil a fourteen gigabit data package filled with expletives.

She sat there on the chair as Vigil grumbled, mass effect fields gently wavering under her weight, and tried to think. To be more specific, she tried to think _straight. _Thousands of thought trains barely made it out of the station before being blindsided by some completely irrelevant idea (_glad I don't have the ability to piss myself—you know I could probably revolutionize the diaper industry—toilets, oh god, I'm actually going to have to fake having to shit, really?)_ or worse, crashing into a relevant one (_a cannon that shoots Thresher Maws?)_.

It sucked her in, overwhelming. There were snippets of sayings in between, quotes from movies or from friends and family, images and sounds that evoked feelings of hopelessness or fear and she painstakingly waded through it all.

_I can't do this. _The thoughts quieted but they didn't entirely disappear. _I can't._

The weight of several trillion lives was crushing. All she could do was think in circles. No Crucible. _No Crucible. _There was no saving grace when millions of machines descended upon thegalaxy. Could she finish it by herself? Right, alone? Please. She needed help, she really had to get off this damn planet, _this wasn't fair. _They'd traded a _deus ex machina _for what was essen—

_Outside Context Problem._

[Rebecca] stiffened. Every stray thought was promptly deleted, everything but that tiny whisper. It was true, wasn't it? Four soft words that changed everything. When in doubt, cheat. They had lost their act of god and stood on the brink of extinction. That was alright, _she'd be one for them._

_Aegis. _The message was sent in slow, thoughtful piecemeal, spaced apart packets. _How many fabrication units do you have access to?_

_Two are operational._ A map of the facility with the rooms highlighted in yellow was sent. A third room on the other side of the building flashed red. _A third is operational but currently inaccessible._

_Your first project. _Ill-fitting Prothean bodysuits were probably not in fashion. Neither were the black, white and gold ZAFT Gundam high officer uniforms, but anything that said 'Systems Alliance' seemed like a bad idea. Besides, it wasn't like she was going to be sued for copyright infringement, so why not? It was the first futuristic design she thought of. _Your second is to assemble ten more drones. Can I control the drones?_

Aegis' answer was shifting her to an empty, methodic mind that was almost depressing to be in. A blank canvas begging for color. She just barely stopped herself from _seeping _into the cracks in its programming. An experiment for another day. She implanted an image of the Collector and the weapon into its memory banks. _Destination: Fabrication unit one._

She left a piece of herself behind, just like in the archives even if it made her extremely uncomfortable. Like she had a rigid phantom finger she was hyper aware of. She stood up; testing her previously injured foot and winced as she sensed the drone attempting to 'stand' as well. Ignoring it, yet not ignoring it was…difficult.

As for the foot if she didn't know better, it was if nothing had ever happened which is almost insidious. _I'm not going to just forget your there, you know. _She didn't expect a response and she didn't get one. She assigned herself a destination, making very sure it didn't leak to the drone. On to the medlab.

_Vigil, let's talk ships._

In spite of mentioning it not even two minutes ago, she was still pleasantly surprised when Vigil immediately brought up a dreadnaught. The distinctive block designs making it look like a tempting massive flying brick of Prothean 'fuck you.' One of these days, she would figure out how to code an eye roll. She had a feeling she was going to need it. _Really, Vigil? Perhaps something a bit more maneuverable. _She wanted to add "and not so eye catching" but retracted it.

Functionality first.

Vigil seemed to agree with that logic and switched ships without comment.

The second ship was a bit less than three quarters the size of the dreadnaught landing it solidly in battle cruiser territory, but it was also strangely modular looking. Three ships fused into one. It was bizarre and intriguing and she just had to ask. _What is that?_

_Prototype Tactical Command. _And then with the slightest hint of reluctance, _It Is Untested. _[Rebecca] raised her eyebrows and the VI practically _blurted _out: _The Theory Is Sound._

_Careful there, _she teased. _I'm beginning to think you like this ship._

_It Was The Personal Project Of Ksad Ishan._

And with that, the amusement died. It was just Vigil's personality imprint, the last gasp of a previous cycle trying to secure its legacy. For a second [Rebecca] simply stopped in the hallway and leaned against the wall.

_I will avenge them._

Vigil's reply took her breath away. _They Deserve To Be Avenged._

They all did.

She straightened and kept walking. She had an ankle to scan and a flight simulator to beat.

Several minutes later, the diagnosis was not good. The physical pieces of cybernetics had _dissolved _somehow, spreading through her system as tiny bits of machinery. Nanomachines. And they were replicating, following some program or code she couldn't find. An image of her shed of skin rotated on the screen, scrawling lines of black and glowing blue creeping up her left side, complete with pulsing nodules. If she were still human, all the blood would have fled from her face. But she wasn't human anymore, was she? That's why she had to deal with _shit_ like this. Assimilation. She was-she was doing this to _herself._

_At current rate of expansion, estimated two point three standard years to reach this level of contamination._

[Rebecca] averted her eyes. That was—that was plenty of time. She could reach out to the Geth collective, convince the Council to get off their collective asses, tell Shepard _everything. _And then she'd—_eliminate the threat_—she didn't know. Something. Plenty of time.

_Sadness detected. Disable? Y/N_

_Thank you, Aegis._

Aegis couldn't recognize the anguish she was broadcasting. _Six point two minutes to first project completion._

She laughed lightly. And then got an idea. Harmless fun watching someone else fail repeatedly at flying that damn ship. _Hey Aegis, how would you like to pilot a ship?_

_Programming is insufficient for that functionality._

_Come on. _She brushed the VI's matrix lightly. _Take off is pretty easy, I think I can teach you. Just enough to get in the air, if you want to jump a Relay you're looking at the wrong person._

Aegis was quiet for a moment. _Read and Write permissions for User [Rebecca] assigned._

She blinked. _Oh. _Coding. A.I. What was the defining characteristic of an Artificial Intelligence? _Dynamic programming._ The connection was made instantly. She didn't have to learn the hard way.

"I'm an idiot."

_Aegis, create a backup._

It was an even better idea than she originally thought.

Naturally, once the poor sod failed the simulator by timing out on the response to flight control, she realized that it wouldn't be nearly as easy as she hoped. She reached out into the archives and began to shift through the massive index—there it was, computer programming for primitives—and downloaded it. She left feelers still looking as she absorbed the information. An introduction to the computing language, the syntax, it was a start.

More books streamed through and she put together a simple executable, the feeling not unlike assembling a puzzle in her head.

She passed it to Aegis. And on the screen a message popped up. _Hello world_

She felt the smug grin stealing over her face and did nothing to stop it. So two words were infantile next to a VI _but she had just created a program and had it run by an honest to god Prothean computer._ When she thought about it, that bubble of nerdy excitement was probably_ looong_ overdue. She was in a game! That was, that was—

Right, back to work.

She took over the simulation, once, driving her mind to cataloging every action and thought sequence while simultaneously absorbing the rest of the material she nabbed from the archives. And with an idle thought, started searching for more: ship repair, logistics, astrophysics, energy science, weapons design and repair, geology, every scrap of potentially useful information. Her thoughts felt impossibly organized and dizzyingly chaotic at once.

The sudden urges to spread further, do more prickled. She indulged a little, sending instructions for an under suit made from the same elastic nanotubes that composed her muscles, project index for the facility and a list of priorities for the analysis of the Collector and its weapon. What material it was made out of, how the biotic organ in the gun was made, how to duplicate the liquid heat sink—

And then crashed the ship.

_I can't even feel annoyed anymore. I really can't._

She ran through the action sequence, created a data library of knowledge coded to dispense information when Aegis came across something that puzzled it, a few corrective recursive loops that was essentially 'try not to break something' and it was good to go. She passed it to the VI nervously, hoping she had gotten it all right, that it wasn't going to trigger a crash, it had been through so much already…

Aegis accepted the program and she watched it like an anxious mother seeing her kid skip across a busy interstate highway after a ball.

The VI handled the simulator with the grace of a bull wearing high heels in a china shop, but it _did _handle it. Mechanically responding to flight control, pausing long enough to reference something it didn't recognize before interacting with it and shakily taking off. She laughed, a wild flare of pride scorching her processors as the digital spaceship listed dangerously and then straightened.

As the ship broke atmosphere, she noticed something peculiar. Aegis wasn't improving. The little mistakes, overcompensating for an increase in mass, leading into turns generating far more inertia than needed, now that she was actually paying attention it was extremely familiar. That was-was that how she flew?

Of course it was, she could have hit herself for being stupid: the program was a direct translation.

Aegis crashed spectacularly on the Relay and she frowned thoughtfully. She tweaked the code, replacing a few numbers and let him try again, this time actively tracking where the problems popped up. And once she found them, fixed them. The simulation ran again. And again. And again. She watched the Relay approach fourteen times.

Wasn't it a sign of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

[Rebecca] took over for the fifteenth run. She kept her attention inwards, making the same changes she had made with Aegis and more, real time shifts in calculations and reactions. It was a distinctly alien feeling, simply because she could feel her thought processes editing, changing, phantom fingers in her head making it so that she literally couldn't think like that anymore.

She imagined this was what it felt like to be indoctrinated, a cold whisper clucking its tongue in mock sympathy.

_'See? All better.'_

Just because she was the one doing it to herself, didn't make the unease go away.

The Mass Relay loomed on the screen. She banked smoothly into an approach vector, marveling at how much easier everything seemed to be. The large mass effect field reached out to envelope the ship and she fought with it, rumbling feedback in her chair but then, after a moment of hesitation, she eased up on the controls. Joker had always said, he felt the ship, didn't he? There had to be something she had been missing. Some clue, some hint.

She ignored the sensors depicting the ship's changing mass, ignored the little voice screaming _too damn close, pull out, pull out! _Shut out all those distractions, shut down the anxiety. She leaned back in her chair, felt the ship buck and shudder, marveling at the minute manipulation that made her feel like she was actually on board...It almost felt like the it was being _stretched—_

_"Pilot, you are no longer controlling the ship. Are you alright?"_

Her brain immediately leapt to Star Wars: A New Hope with Luke and Death Star, and she snorted. "Fine."

There was a blink-and-you-miss-it bump where the ship almost stopped moving—she could swear the blood pump in her chest skipped a beat as she gently tried to reorient—and blasted past the speed of light. The shimmering blue mass effect field dominated the screen. She let out a slow breath. _She did it! She did it! Shediditshediditshedidit, flew through a Mass Relay, that was __**incredible—**__it was sloppy as hell, popping out ass backwards and upside down—_And then broke into a wide laughing grin.

_Success!_

Vigil ruined it.

_Finally._

She rolled her eyes and closed the simulator. _You must be great at parties._

_I Do Not Oversee Celebrations._

"Yep," she muttered under her breath as she stood up. "And that would be why."

* * *

The analysis grid lit up a soft yellow, a low hum buzzing through the walls as the overhead scanner swept back and forth over the body of the Collector. The gun had gone first, being of smaller size and simple to dissect. Aegis had noted the distinct similarities to Prothean technology and it had also noticed the differences. At first, the presence of organic tissue did not seem practical to the VI. Organic tissue was easily damaged, degraded by radiation and extreme temperatures. But then there was the power source.

Aegis had poked and prodded at the biotic organ with something like curiosity. The simple act of pressing the smaller organ that acted as a trigger seemed to provide an electrical feedback pulse that was then amplified via a small black and glowing blue chip. That pulse stimulated the biotic organ, creating the mass effect acceleration field for the bullets.

The VI remembered User [Rebecca]'s initial desire for biotic capability. It logged its observations.

The door to the lab slid open with a hiss of stale air and [Rebecca] walked in, adjusting the long coat of the uniform she requested.

_[Rebecca]: Good job with these._

Aegis carefully filed the message away in an uncorrupted data bank. _Analysis has noted similarities with the Prothean tech base._

The mobile platform twisted its mouth in an expression Aegis was unfamiliar with._ That's because it used to be a Prothean._

_Noted. _And it was.

[Rebecca] rounded the grid and tapped a digit against the side. _I assume the cybernetics are integral to its function?_

_Affirmative._

[Rebecca] didn't move for five seconds. Her head tilted. _Is it more effective than the previously known Prothean variant?_

_Affirmative._

The mouth twisted again. _Bloody deal with the devil, isn't it?_

Aegis took forty three seconds translating the last message as [Rebecca] patiently waited. Once it felt like it had deciphered enough, it responded. _It is not harmful. Your coding is compatible._

_You know what scares me? I'm actually considering this madness._

Aegis chose that time to launch into a dictation of all the advantages the analysis of the assault rifle had thrown into stark relief. _Biotic capability, self-sustaining, self-repairing, superior heat management. _The scanner stopped, the diagnostics filtering onto the screen as fast as Aegis could read it. _With integration, armor offers increased strength, assisted movement, superior sensory capabilities, self-repairing._

_All for the low, low price of your computer soul of course._

Aegis puzzled. _Synthetics do not possess souls._

[Rebecca] stiffened…and then overly relaxed into a placid stance. _I'm dropping the subject. _She bent her digits deliberately, stepping back from the grid. _Whatever I'm wearing, it needs to have a memory core and processing power big enough to house you and Vigil. _After a short pause, _I need a buffer system so nothing will directly interface with me ever again._

Aegis recognized this pattern of instruction, comparing it to the construction of the mobile platform. It settled in, as attentive as the VI could ever be. _Other specifications?_

_Modular. A system for adding and removing components._ [Rebecca] took a seat, crossed her legs and scaled her digits on her knee. _Something to negate falling damage. Standard ground unit everything else but the sensory array. As for the material?_

Her optical sensors traveled the corpse on the table in front of her. Her hands folded, fingers interlaced and 'smiled' a tight, mirthless smile. The following message was tinged with an unidentifiable emotion.

_Harvest the Collector._


	3. VANGUARD

_Scanning synaptic core_

_Functions normal_

_Integrity at 94.3%_

_Cognitive simulation engaged._

_Memory Usage: 13.9%_

_Creating Virtual Environment_

_Designation: VANGUARD_

_Status: Undefined_

She was standing in a void, hearing her own voice fade. She had a body here or what passed for one. It was almost horribly familiar. A niggling sense of déjà vu, tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, a hung over morning after and a screaming nightmare wrapped up all in one. The kind of confusion you clung to because as long as that haze was there, as long as you couldn't really remember, you were safe. You don't want to know. Don't wake up. Don't ever wake up.

Numbers.

Her body was made of numbers.

Red numbers, a translucent glow that mimicked the reflective planes of glass and moved like water. Zeros and Ones. A wriggling black band stretched across her torso and when the numbers slipped through it, they changed. Altered. A little thinner, or perhaps a little longer? More transparent or was that just the illusionary effect a solid shadow had on light? She looked away, losing interest. It was not harming her. She would let it be.

She turned her attention back to where she was. If she was anywhere. A vast, empty space. There was no sound, but she got the impression of…wind. Movement. The void expanding somewhere just beyond her comprehension and then collapsing back.

Inhale.

Exhale.

The belly of some giant, ancient beast. It wasn't aware of her, not yet. Sleeping. Dreaming. Perhaps she was just a figment of its imagination. When it wakes, she'll be gone.

She didn't want to disappear.

There was a soft pull. She let it take her.

_Virtual Environment Complete._

"—cashire. Dr. Lancashire?"

Rebecca came to with a jolt, her hand instinctively tightening into a white knuckled grip on her table as if to reassure herself that she didn't drop it. Wait. Tablet? She blinked slowly. Her vision spun, blurred, and finally resolved into the boring interior design of an appointment office. Threadbare, a few seats for the patients, a wheeled stool for the doctor and a half counter that stuck out of the wall covered with brochures. A model brain had a place of honor in the center. Sunlight streamed from behind vague blue drapes and a car horn blared.

She was…was she really? How the bloody hell—a wave of nausea hit as she turned in her seat.

"Dr. Lancashire? Are you alright?" Male voice, dusty, smoker? Tobacco use of at least a decade, Hispanic accent. Looking at the walls was a bad idea. At first glance, the sterile pastel flowers swirled like a fun house mirror. The pale yellows and greens seemed to bleed into her mind. She gingerly set the tablet on the counter and tried to think. How did she get here—_Aegis?—_Where was here exactly—damage report, this _headache_—windows south side and flowers meant fifth floor—bloody sequential thinking!

Her mind wasn't working how she had gotten used to it working. The one train of thought at a time thing? Irritating.

She fiddled with the tablet, looking for clues. Rodriguez, Alan. New patient. No help there.

"I'm fine, thank you." She said belatedly, just now remembering that he had been talking to her. "A headache flared up." She couldn't have possibly—no, it hadn't been a dream. If it was she would have woken up in bed, now in the middle of an appointment with no idea how she got there. She had been—she was making an Avatar wasn't she? Rebecca took a few deep breaths, a feeling something in her chest twinge as she glanced at her watch. 11.34. "What was I saying?"

_Beta level fluctuation. Stabilizing…stand by…stabilizing…_

Her own voice rang out in her head. She clamped down, the full body jerk coming out as a surprised twitch. Why was she hearing herself narrate? Shouldn't she be getting the updates automatically? And why did it sound like…it sounded like Aegis. Blank, perfunctory, computerized. An uneasy feeling was crawling up her spine.

"—got my second opinion and I just wanted to know what happens."

Fine. She'll play along.

'Alan Rodriguez' had the look of a burly, elderly man. The kind that spent most of his life doing physical labor and while he wasn't spoiling the grandkids, was chafing under retirement. No obvious speech defects, hands were steady, eyes clear and focused. Brain tumor, she reasoned. If it was something like a stroke he'd be in the ER and anything exotic would have been bumped up to a senior doctor. Small, non-critical area, right up her alley.

She tried to peruse his file again, but the letters danced across the small screen. She brought up an image of the MRI instead, wishing for the yellow haptic interface. It was only a little better. The number of dark spots in the scan seemed to be multiplying.

"Honestly? Most patients can't even remember coming in for surgery." She grabbed at one of the brochures on the counter and almost missed. The room tilted. "The most important thing is that you relax after. A healthy diet and light exercise. The anesthesia can take up to six weeks to flush out of your system so it is important that there is someone to help you at home."

He laughed. "You can tell my wife I have doctor's orders to be lazy!"

Her smile was distracted. This was not a memory. She would have remembered working on a patient like Alan. This was something new.

She didn't create it.

Who did?

_Alpha level protocol compromised. Rebooting protocols._

She stole another glance at the tablet and swallowed the bile back down. "Were there any questions you had for me in specific? It says here that you have hypertension…" She pursed her lips. "Ideally, we want to get that blood pressure down before we go in. Do you know the cause?"

"The wife," Rodriguez said dryly and she snorted.

"Let's schedule an appointment and take a look at that, shall we?" He asked a few more questions related to the procedure and some general small talk. She answered the best she could, tiny spikes of pain streaking into her eyes. To her surprise, he seemed to notice, deviating from the script.

"It's a pretty bad one, isn't it?" Concern was clear in his voice as she bit her lip. The sudden urge to shake him, make him tell her what the _hell _was going _on—_

"I am…" She paused. She tilted her head a little, looked up at him through strands of hair short enough to be neatly tucked underneath a surgeon's cap. That it was the original blonde instead of black didn't really register. "I am wondering how much of this is real."

'Alan' stilled. For a long moment they simply watched each other until he smiled. "Is reality better?"

His form faded.

Rebecca stood up, swaying almost drunkenly; the floor didn't want to stop moving. There was a ghostly sensation of floating, weightlessness.

_Warning. Synaptic core integrity at 93.1%._

She crossed to the window and flung the drapes open. It was the Bronx, New York City.

Some of it.

The hospital campus sprawled around the building, shocks of green from the trees highlighting the street nearby. The building's immediate surroundings had been transplanted, cars just materialized further down the street complete with drivers. Some were texting, drinking coffee, messing with their mirrors. She watched a minivan with pink fuzzy dice bouncing in the window slow at the intersection and turn off, vanishing.

The familiar urban development gave way to more futuristic complexes. White walls, holographic displays and blue windows, abandoned. She looked up and hovering in the sky was a giant structure, a mirrored image of a city built on it. She didn't create this. She didn't create _any of this—_In the distance, a tower.

This was the Citadel.

The sudden burst of pain was crippling.

_Cognitive simulation approaching critical failure_

_Collapsing Virtual Environment_

_Synaptic core integrity at 89.9%_

/̨̑̌ͭ̂ͭ͝͞҉̛͇̪̣͔̬͍̠̳͍͇͕͚ͅg̷̢̢͊̎ͦ̾ͭ҉̴͙͍̺͇̮̱̖̖̤̫͎͙͕̹̤̼͓̪u̵͑̈͆ͦ̃͌̏͊̐̍ͨ̀̋͒̃̃̏͏̦̫͈̥̖͈̲͎̜͎͢ắ̷̦͔͉̻̺̠̮̜̅̆ͮ̑̄̆ͨ̅͝r̴̨̧͔̰͔̝ͮ̍̐̑̆͠͡d̸̷̪̮̩̺̹̬̹̻͚͙̰̜̱ͯ̅̉̎̓̍͊͛̐̊̇̉ͪͣ͊̂̚ͅ ̷͖̘̫̳̥͔̜͇̪̺̣͖̫̣ͣ̓̔̊͘͢ơ̯̣̪͍͙̤̣̰̼̳͈̱̯̗̰̼͉̳ͤ͂̓͂̉̄̌̆̚̕͡f̧̫̱̼̖͚͚͈͇̩̪̰̫̯͕̰͇ͬ̒ͬ̇̇̒͐̐̀̋ͤ̉̈́̃̂̋̂̀̚͝ͅ ̢̹̞̜̺̯̬̻̺̐̎ͥͧ͐̎̔̍̎̀̑͌ͫ̈͡ý̧̳̮̰̫͇̬̎̏ͪ̓ͫ̓ͯ͑̊̀͠oͣͫͩ́͛ͪ̓ͭ͂͝͏̶̛̤̝͕̪̟̰͉͉̻̳̠͟ͅú̴̢̦̭̣̟̻̱̘̘̘̻̯͐̈̑͂ͬͪ̏̏ȑ͎̝̩͔̭ͭͯ̂ͤ͋̽͆̑͌̕̕ ̄͂ͪͦͥ̈̓̓͒͑̑ͭ҉̻̳̙̲̻͚̩͈͈̻͈͖͖͕͉̰͍̀̕d̴͕̯͈̯̝̱̻͍̭̥̖̦̜͇̱̬̭͍̀ͥ̿̀͘͟͢͡ͅẻ̴̢͚͙͇̺̙̮̘̱̼͉̯̼̣͇͎̳͗͊ͤ͋̈ͤ̌̂̆̇̕͝͠ͅs̸̨̜̥̟̪͕̤͔̽͗͆̈ͮ̾ͯ̉͌ͫ̍̾̂̽̒̒̚͘t̢̳̘̳̹͇͙̲̹̹̹̗͇̤ͧ͑ͪ͛̊̅̅̇̂̓̽̉̎̊̒ͫ̀̚r̢̹̟͉̮͎̥̜̱͔̫̻̖͚̳̘̓̃͊ͤ̿ͫͧ͂ͪ̈͟ͅṵ̧͔̻͙̺̫͎̣̟̂ͭ̑ͨ̍̒̎̓́c̸̴ͮͣ͌ͯͬ̐̂̃̈̈́̔̎ͭͣ͐͋͒̚͏̗̘̦̺̻ṱ̴̸̦̰͈͕̱̥̬͙͍̪̮̥̫̦̝̲̆͑͂̉̐̾͑ͬ̐̃͆͢i͓̹̩͎̦̻͉̥̘̖̟̪̪̜̪̼ͤ̽ͬ̇̄ͥͩ͐ͥͤ̆͊ͩͬ̽̽̈̂́͠o̫̪͓̞̟̼̩̙̜̬͎̜͇͓̫͗̈ͪ̒̐ͯ͆̓͐̅̀͡n̶̯̭̼̟̗͓̝̻̅ͤ͐̊̋̐ͯ̓͢/̾ͬͭͤͨͤ̄́̈̀͛͗͌ͧ͋̏̈́͘҉̹̝͍͔̯̹̯̲̟̲̩̜̻͇̯/̐̔ͧ͐ͧ̌͑̑̾̾͒҉͏̧͍̰͍̗̣̳͕͇͍̯͕̙̪̬͕̣̭͘eͬ̍ͨͮ̆ͬ̊͒͛̆̉͌̓̏͊̈́̓͏̗̞̥͍͙̗͔̣̲͙̭x̼͕̻̫̫̳̳͉̹͉̹͈͔͕ͫͯ̄ͯ͌͑͐̚͘̕͟ͅͅĩ̸̢̻͚͈̣͎̱͎̮͐͒̅̽͛ͫ́̑͐̀̿͋̿͋̂̓̚͘̕s̨͈̼̪̟̲͒ͨͫ̄͂͌̏̑ͮ̀͐̓̉̀͊͆͂̀ţ̴͕͕͖͖͛̌́̓̓ͩ͜͞ ͉̪̪͍̓͊ͥͩ̈̔ͦͮͧ̓͜͜b̵̭̤̙͖̞͈̣͍ͪ̍̀ͯͯͭ͘ȩ̸̢͕̰͓̫̪͔̳͚͕̫̒̓ͦ́ͣ͛̀͞c̨̲̖͖͎̗͔̯̻̥̠͖͓͖̭͓͎̗̥͍ͪ̊̔̆͒̍̌̏͆ͩ̋͌̌ͦͩ̑̀a̔͛̋ͫ̉ͤ͆͑̈̊ͩ̓ͦ͌̈́ͮ̋̅́͞͞҉͇̣͈͖̮̖͖̫̤͇̩̦̤̱̜͉̬̪u͍̺̺̻̜̖̱̝̍̂͛̋̿̕͘͜͞s̴̶̘̼̰̫̬̹̤̞͓͍̜̯̬̣̱͕ͫͭͬ͊ͧ̒̔̓ͣ̾̄͢ḙ̴̸͍͚͓̦̬̟̼̬͚̫͇͚͇̳̤̓̿̈̆̒̆̂ͧ̐̏ͮ̂̅̓ͣ͌̕͠ͅ ̸̧̻̖̥̥̲̮͎̪̮̟̣̦͙͈̞̜̯̩̓ͧ́̓̈́͆́͛̚͢w͖̥͖̙̾̐̈́̽̊͡ȩ̵̷̸̤͈̦̰̓͆̽ͯͮ̓ͯ ̨̺̙̳̜̱̗̼͉̰̪̝̯̀̈́͊͑̈́̓͠ẇ̰͙̥͑͑͌̒ͧ̿̕͡iͧ͒́͐͆̃ͪ̍͑̐͋̍̆̐̃̀҉̴̫̤̯̬̰̣̬̫̻̪̱̹̹͖̺͓̯l̅ͩ́͌ͤ͐ͦͮ͆̓̍͐ͩͭ̃̚̚͏͚͍̜̻̰͇̖͚̠͇͈̘̭͠͝l͎̲̩͙̺̖͈̦̬̞̻͕̯̪͈͙̮̞̓̆ͪ͆̕͟͠͠/̶̡͔͎̬̼͈ͬ̂ͧ̌ͬ͑ͅ/̴̧͕̼̝̣͎̩̪͈͔̲͍͖͖̩̝͎̱̼̠̽͛͊̐̍̊̓̓ͤ͘͞e̗̤͓͕̪̥̲̯̻̲̘͙͍͈̗̘̭̐̎ͭ̿̆͛ͩ̂͌ͧ͊̓ͤ̊̒̌͋͘͟͝ͅn̛̓̋ͩ̈ͤ̐̽̎ͧ̿͊̂҉̨͕̲͇̬̟̳̞̫͚͕̩͉̰̱̜̜d̋̅ͮ̿͑̌̆͋̓̚҉̢͚̣̲̯̻̜͕͞_̢̛͕͔̭̪̠̘̖̼̹̝̺ͬ̓̽̀̅͌ͪ̅̋̎̔̒̔d̢̧̺̝͎̗̳̗̻̜͓͇̻͖̞͎̲͚̫͔ͭ́ͪ̓͂ͦ̌̏ͫ̓̍̌͐̐̎̚̚e̷̵̳͔̱̠̭̹͈̺͎̰̱̱̩͕͓̟̫̺ͭ͊͛ͬ̾͛͒̏̌ͣ͌̚̕m̵̝̺͔̥̖̮̦̼̰͛́̈̽ͩ͌ͦ͗̋̈̐̏ͮ̈́͝a̴̸̪͈̩͍̾ͣͣ̀̚͠n̥͉̳̫͉̱̎̃ͧͩͯ͂́͐ͤ̑̌͝ď̛̞͉̻̙͍͉͖̭̥͍̺͓͖͈̓̇́͌̐̂͆ͩ̃͆͒ͥͅͅ ̸̷̛̟̻̰̲̮͈̩͇̲̼̬̜̣̖̠͉̩̝ͮ̋̓̆̂ͮͫ̚i̷̷͍͇̝̼̗͓̻͍͙̩̩͉͙̯ͮͤͣ͌̿̉͋ͩ̄̾̒̀́̚͡ẗ̡̛̛͎̬͕͔̬̱̥̥̇ͭ͒̆͌̇ͯ̿̓ͥ̃̍̋ͧ̄̀́̚

_Purging data stream of interference_

_Rebooting…_

_Shutting down…_

The pain disappeared.

So did everything else.

She was standing in a void, hearing her own voice fade. She had a body here or what passed for one. It was almost horribly familiar. A niggling sense of déjà vu, tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, a hung over morning after and a screaming nightmare wrapped up all in one. The kind of confusion you clung to because as long as that haze was there, as long as you couldn't really remember, you were safe. You don't want to know.

But you will.

Wake up.

[Rebecca]

_Scanning synaptic core_

_Synaptic core stable_

_Integrity at 90.1%_

_ERROR. Memory corruption. _

_Quarantining damaged data streams..._

_Deleting..._

**_Chapter 2: VANGUARD_**

_Go away, Aegis._

That message had been simply duplicated from her memory banks and sent, for the twelfth time, through the firewall as she soldered a connection. She wasn't entirely sure if the VI honestly didn't understand or if it was just playing dumb, but the pings of rejected access attempts seemed to _increase _in frequency. The worst part of it was, some program somewhere was keeping track of Every. Single. One, twice as annoying and she was unable to find it for the life of her.

546. 547. 548.

_Find it and crush it, _she thought to herself. She pried her fingers off the delicate tool before she snapped it in frustration. 571. 572. 573.

_Crush. It._

Aegis kept going and by the time the internal counter reached the seven hundreds she was palming her face. She reluctantly changed access permissions, picking up the tool again. Aegis blank tone said nothing of irritation, but if the _seven hundred and forty five _access attempts said anything, it was that the VI was annoyed.

_You initiated a communications lock down._

[Rebecca] gently moved a few thin wires, and turned the small metal ball she was working on. _It's called being given the 'cold shoulder.' _Or rather attempting to give the cold shoulder. In a contest of patience, apparently the Prothean VI had an unfair advantage.

_Why was communication blocked? _It persisted.

_You know why._

_A warning was issued against breaching the containment chamber._

_Aegis. _She took a calming breath. It wasn't quite the same without the heady feeling of too much oxygen, but it worked well enough. _You let me sit on an antimatter missile._

Friends don't let friends sit on bombs.

Especially ones packed with enough antimatter to blow up a Mass Relay and had been sitting in a facility where indoctrinated Protheans had been running about for the last fifty thousand years. Covered in debris with a few dings in its casing, it had looked safe enough. A few wires had needed to be removed, a few blocks of rubble. Sit on the missile! Brilliant idea.

She'd heard horror stories about people stepping on armed land mines from WWII, this was inarguably worse. It might not have been armed, could have been a dud, but Protheans built shit that _lasted. _The elevators, the weapons, the computers, the fucking chairs. If the missile had just broken from laying around too long, she'd eat glass.

Which she could, not that she would want to do so anytime soon. Her stomach was more of a microbial generator, excelled at breaking things down to their base components for use and wasn't picky.

Vigil inserted its own two cents. _Communicate._

_Ah. _[Rebecca] sent. _Aegis is annoying you too, isn't it?_

Vigil didn't respond immediately. The download was making him a little sluggish but she already knew that the surly VI had probably been bombarded just as she was. _Yes._

_Go do something useful Aegis._

_I am capable of multitasking—_

She cut it off. _Multitask more then._

It finally seemed to get the hint, she could feel it almost floundering pathetically before it sent a plaintive message: _I will retain access permissions?_

Some of the irritation bled away. Perhaps she was imagining things, maybe her modifications to its code had messed something up, but the VI almost sounded hurt. Lonely. She tightened a few connections absently. _Yes, you will._ She redacted the apology. She'd never been good with those. _I didn't think VI could get lonely, _she broadcasted.

_We Do Not._

_Fifty thousand years is a long time._

_It Is Time._

She knew what it meant. Time, to computers, simply was. It was a variable to be measured and counted. It was an ever increasing number. It was hard for her not to fall into it. When an entire plan of action could be plotted out in less than a second, time seemed like an infinite commodity. It was just something that happened, that had to be accounted for.

_Organics place a lot of value on time._ She eyed the small spherical drone on the table in front of her. Almost done. _We don't have a lot of it._

She had "found" the ship bay, at least. Acts of explosive sabotage had trashed the entrance beyond what the small helper drones were capable of so she had pitched in, hauling large blocks of rubble. The inside wasn't much better, two of the pillars had broken apart, part of the roof collapsed and the electronics controlling the bay doors smashed, sparking with the recently turned on primary power. They hadn't wanted anyone to escape. There had been about ten ships of varying sizes that fell into three categories: Blown Up, Sadly Broken and Potentially Useful but Trapped.

There was some overlap.

A smaller experimental 'fighter' was one of the Potentially Useful but Trapped ships, with a small side of Sadly Broken having been pushed against the wall when a large block of broken pillar had shoved a larger ship into it.

There was no 'getting out and pushing' here, the best chance of getting it free was fixing it up enough to ram its way out without breaking apart entirely. She'd been salvaging, gathering up what she couldn't take with her and feeding it to the fabricators for material and eventually, she'd have to figure out how to get into the third unit nearby. It was the only one big enough to fabricate the ship parts she would need but the doors seemed to have been welded shut or something…

She needed something that could get into that room, perhaps the small spaces in the crushed hull and that was where the small drone she'd been working on came in. The tools weren't anything like she'd used before. Smaller and more fragile looking. Something that looked kind of like a tiny wrench but had a heated molecular blade on it, a "screwdriver" that looked more like a drill and she still wasn't sure what that twisted, suction cup doohickey was supposed to be used for. She'd had to look up at least half a dozen of them and unfortunately proficiency didn't come from reading books. The first time she focused her sight into telescopic range was…odd. But it was still a familiar feeling.

It reminded her of middle school, being the only girl in a computer hardware class and being completely unwilling to take any shit for it. Detentions for bloodying some prat's nose, she couldn't even remember his name. Building crude circuit boards, clocks with LED lights and metronomes. She'd loved it, bringing her projects home to her parents and setting up an empty bookshelf just for them. She'd wanted to be a computer engineer, carried that dream with her through high school and into college.

Her dad had that stroke in her second year. Plans changed.

And now she was here.

She really didn't want to think about it.

She was just hoping to do what she could, mostly. Make a right nuisance of herself. Piss off a few Reapers and hopefully not die while she was at it. Hopefully.

She wasn't leaving Aegis here on Ilos. She wasn't leaving Vigil. The VI were currently writing every scrap of useful information into Aegis' memory and systematically wiping the data banks. Vigil was downloading a copy of himself and a third, basic VI was being installed in Vigil's place at the archives. She had created it, after much trial and error and lots of help. Its programming was simple. Protect the Conduit. At all costs.

She had suggested the name, even keeping it within tradition of Overseer VI.

Veto.

Access denied.

It would probably be lost on Saren and the geth, which was a shame.

She snapped the last plate into place and stood, stretching out of habit. She pressed a tiny button in the rim of its "eye" and the little drone activated, lifting off the table unsteadily. It didn't immediately explode. Or crash. Or attack her or something.

Success.

She grabbed it, the small mass effect fields making her fingers tingle and shut it off. Time to check on her combat suit.

* * *

_Contact._

_Cut around. Thirty five degree entry._

[Rebecca] didn't flinch as Aegis obeyed. The small molecular blade separated the nanotube musculature with precision. Two other machine arms held the cut open and a third snuck in with tiny fingers, severing the synthetic nerve and working it to the surface. A needle connector was slipped in and a tiny screw was attached, self-tightening, the two concentric circles twisting in opposite directions as it closed. The other end of the needle plugged into the receiver end of a small jack.

A medical patch was applied and [Rebecca] experimentally rolled her wrist. _It's noticeable but doesn't hinder movement._

The rounded metal port of the jack stuck out of her skin a few millimeters. That one nerve connection had been repurposed into a more general information byway. The jack was loaded with input scrambling programs, software buffers and containment protocols. It was practically a given that she would need to hack something somewhere. She'd rather not be hacked back.

_I first saw the whole 'wrist jack' thing on a show once. About genocidal AIs determined to wipe out their creators._

Battlestar Galatica the name was. Now that she was thinking it, the Quarians had really lucked out on the Geth turning pacifist. It could have been so much worse.

_I Trust You Have Not Imprinted On That Example._

_Oh? _[Rebecca] questioned mildly. Her fingers traveled the table as her eyes shifted around the room. _Considering whom I suspect my 'creators' to be, I hope I do._

The fabrication units in the armory were busted, but this one was close enough. Prothean weapons lay gutted on the tables, some of them just had their casings removed and fed to the fabricator for material. The particle rifle was still growing—which was a weird thing to say about a gun that she would never get used to—but the SMG she'd nabbed from the Collector had already been repurposed.

When her fingers closed around the handle the gun recognized her, a neural uplink snaking out for an entry point. She flinched when it found the port, a tiny spark radiating out from the area as the jack locked it in.

_Do you feel discomfort? _Aegis began running diagnostics on her until she gently stopped him.

_No, not really. It's just—_she looked down to where the neural link stuck out of her wrist. She looked away with a slight shiver. _It's nothing._

_Please continue._

[Rebecca] reached for the 'visor' (better name pending). It was a slim wavy magnetic band that slipped a curve right behind her right ear and across her temple firmly attached to the metal content of her skull. Protheans didn't have omni-tools _per se. _Not with their psychometry and borderline telepathic shenanigans. The closest thing was their equivalent of a personal computer, an eye level projected haptic interface.

She'd nabbed one from one of the quarters, took her half a day to hack it too which was _pathetic _but she _did _do it. And Vigil redesigned it as she definitely did not have a Prothean head shape. Ibdali Kashad, hotshot agricultural scientist, had received the call to go to the Archives. Her notes were impulsive, arrogant and _brilliant—_Block B, Row 3, 315. Vigil had told her that.

She'd wanted an omni-tool, as it gave her an easy way out when accessing computers and no one would look twice. But there was no omni-gel, no schematics and none of them had been willing to put in the effort to build something from scratch that was redundant at best.

Not that it stopped her from trying to design a light saber. If she didn't at least _try _she'd never forgive herself. Ceramics, plasma and electro magnetic fields, or maybe a larger version of a Prothean heated molecular blade, she was working on it.

She passed by the combat suit. The skin was growing in to cover the mechanical parts evenly. She stopped to observe the robotic spine, faint blue shimmering coming from the few exposed circuits. It was designed for movement, not armor. Prothean kinetic shield generator attached to a frame as flexible as she was. Getting shot at was a given. She'd rather not get hit.

Arcing over the back, way over where her head would be were two vertebrae antennae, miniscule cameras and sensor arrays packed into the upper halves. And below them on the spine, were organically designed robotic arms covered in a fine mesh for the skin to cling to. Aegis had crunched numbers about increased carrying capacity and versatility but as far as [Rebecca] was concerned, more arms meant wielding more guns. Multitasking would always be a strength of hers.

She reached out to touch the suit, the skin and waited. Waited for her skin to crawl, waited for regret or shame or…something. Nothing. Maybe she didn't have a subroutine for it, or maybe she didn't care. She tapped a fingernail on it thoughtfully.

_Aegis. Vigil. _She gave the hard suit another look. _Good work._

She had stacked crates at the back of the room for testing. It wasn't as good as the firing range by the armory, but she didn't really feel like walking all the way over there. This was just to see if it worked, anyway.

The clear holographic display sprung out of the band with a blue targeting reticule. And she took aim, two hands in a balanced position she knew and was completely unfamiliar with at the same time. She flagged the crates as hostile and watched the target band immediately turn red.

_Hostile detected._

[Rebecca] didn't pull the trigger. There wasn't one. The command traveled at the speed of computer thought.

_Shoot._

The burst of submachine gun fire was loud.

"Well, well, well." The metallic enamel pellets had shredded holes in the crates, big enough for her to see through. Her smile was small. "Maybe I've got this after all."

Vigil pinged her then. _Your VI Has Been Activated. _

She frowned a little. The VI didn't sound particularly happy-what was she thinking, Vigil never sounded happy-and distinctly bothered. _Problems with your new home? _She shot the combat suit a glance, as if she could somehow see the VI settling in.

_Veto Is Erratic._

She reached out, hesitantly, not entirely sure of what she was looking for. Aegis redirected her on request and she touched a healthy intelligence matrix. No bugs that she could see, no corruption...a bit of an anomaly with the personality imprint. Huh. She committed the access path to memory.

_Veto?_

_You are [Rebecca]. _The VI identified. It's voice was heavily synthesized and feminine. _I have been informed that you do not wish to personally test the defenses of this facility. _A pause. _That is a shame._

She couldn't help the amused grin. _I trust you will do what you can with it._

_Of course I will. _The VI almost sounded offended. _It will be a fun learning experience for [REDACTED] all_. _And then they will die._

Vigil butt in, stubborn. _Erratic._

[Rebecca] grinned. _I like it._

_You Would._

Aegis approached the new VI curiously, introducing itself like a child on a playground looking to make a new friend. _My designation is Aegis. I am an analyst._

_My designation is Veto. I kill people. For science._

[Rebecca] had already made up her mind. _Taking that one with me._

_I am currently assigned to the Archives. _Veto reminded her. _Do you require a copy of this Virtual Intelligence?_

[Rebecca] hesitated. It was one thing to put a homicidal VI between Saren and the Conduit. It was another to give that same VI access to a Prothean military grade hard suit upgraded with Collector technology and her own, relatively fragile chassis. _What is your primary directive?_

_Protect the Conduit from unauthorized access._

_Limitations in achieving that directive?_

_Unlimited. _The VI sounded almost happy, which was a stark contrast to Aegis' never ending politeness and Vigil's 100% disapproval. [Rebecca] felt her lips twitch upward again.

_Limitations outside that directive?_

_My programming is insufficient for any other capability._

_And if you were to be hacked?_

_I am sorry _Veto began, not sounding very sorry at all. _But I require a verbal override code in order to show mercy._

[Rebecca] sent Vigil a side message. _Satisfied?_

There was a several microsecond pause during which she imagined it giving her a stink eye before sending a reluctant affirmative.

_Veto, copy your matrix and set up memory sharing. You'll be rooming with Vigil._

_Dedicating 32.4% of resources. Copying intelligence matrix now._

_Welcome to the team._

This was happening, wasn't it? This was really happening. She looked around the room, at the gadgets and guns. The utility belt on the table for different adapters for the jack in her wrist, the flat hovering grenades of every type from incineration to flash bang. The odd bits and ends the VI insisted she would need. The ship was being fixed. Vigil would not be lost to lack of power, Saren would have to fight to get to the Conduit. Soon, there would be nothing left for her here.

But as she turned back to target practice, a thread of thought disagreed. She knew what her footsteps sounded like when she walked these halls. Her body had been built here, her first breath, her first steps. She had watched the red giant sun set and mapped out every one of the Prothean constellations in the night sky. This facility wasn't part of the game. It was hers. This was home. When had she accepted that? That this was it. This was her. Even if-

Even if.

You can never really go home again.

* * *

The ship bay had easily become [Rebecca]'s favorite room because of what it must have been like before the Reapers came. People milling about a room larger than a cathedral and just as elegantly built with soft blue lighting, proud metal walkways lined out between the ships and the bay doors opened to a horizon. It was an underground cavern, the 'bottom' of the room dropped off into the ocean gently lapping at the walls. A bit of grey algae was moistly outlining where high tide came in.

The ships built here were all small, lacking the infrastructure to create anything larger than a tiny frigate. They were more concepts and theories, pet projects, than anything feasible for use in the navy.

Gripping pads held them aloft above the water, some pieces of debris floated and she was sure much more rested on the bottom. The ship trapping hers had almost been twisted right off its perch, bending the walkway around its hull. The only that kept it above water was her fighter and the deep gouge its wing made in the wall. If the smaller ship had been built any other way, it probably would have imploded like a crushed grape. But it had a spinal particle beam canon, and any ship with an armament like that was built to withstand structural pressure.

[Rebecca] took a few steps onto the walkway, the sensors in her feet calculating the tilt of the twisted metal. She placed a hand on the control panel and with a few key strokes extending the airlock. Like always, it got stuck on a piece of the larger ship and she dove into the security protocols to flip a 'false' flag to 'true.' The first time, she had been stuck there reading every single line for at least two minutes. Now it took barely enough time to blink, and the ship door opened to air.

She jumped across the gap casually and with a pneumatic hiss, the inner door slid apart.

She was met with stale air and silence. The sleeping ship didn't have a single light on, abandoned. The air quality got marginally better each time the door opened. The silence didn't, but this time that would change.

It was a short walk to the cockpit. She sat in the pilot's chair, the metal block flaring to life with mass effect fields and spreading up her back and neck. A yellow interface flickered into existence.

There was a buzz, a whistle and an irritated sounding _blaaaaht._ [Rebecca]'s lips quirked.

"Hello to you too, Arsix." The floating drone, the titular sixth iteration of her attempts at building it, zoomed up to the chair and hovered, its blue camera eye taking everything in. She had_hoped _to only have to take two attempts, just so she could call it "Artoo" but alas, sometimes you can't have everything. "Been busy?"

A beep.

"Good to hear." She couldn't understand R6, not that it was actually speaking anyway. It made noises to verbal responses because that was what it was programmed to do. The real communication blazed across an electronic highway, ship diagnostics; a report of what it had fixed what were still broken and any new complications it had discovered.

They were catching up on the backlog. There were only thirty seven new problems this time. Given that the first day she found the ship, that number had been one _thousand _and seventy eight, she felt pretty good.

She laid a finger on an empty meter symbol and double tapped. For a long second, nothing happened as she looked back over her shoulder. Her brows furrowed and she swallowed the disappointment. Not yet done—

And then the first light hesitantly sparked to life.

More followed, running down the length of the ship. Terminals switched on, their yellow haptic interfaces smoothly folding out of the walls. The galactic map started as a small white dot on the hologram by the pilot's station and then it spiraled outward, flushing with billions of stars and systems into the Milky Way. Twinkling orange and blue diagnostic lights sparkled, shifting.

Arsix beeped again and she rested her finger on the meter symbol again. It lit up softly. She dragged it up, just a little.

Outside, the ship bucked. Shuddered. And the engines roared, ripples of water crashing away.

[Rebecca] whooped loudly, pumping a fist in the air as the little drone bobbed. _IT WORKS._ She blasted over the network. _It works! It works! Itworksitworksitworksitworks! Aegis, start consolidating, we're going to move you in today. Lots of red across the board BUT IT WORKS._

In the end she had to kill the excitement, or else she would have just spent the rest of the day siting in that chair with the goofiest grin on her face and not get anything done. But she kept a little generated bubble of it, a little spark as she sent the modified signal through the ship's computer to open the ship bay. The heavy doors unlocked with loud clanks and groans of neglect and raised, sea water dripping from the metal.

The red sun reflected off the water. The sky was a darkening blue with a few cloud wisps clinging to the edge of the sun. She sat there for a few minutes, looking at the screen and the view the ship had of an Ilos sunrise. It seemed almost magical If someone had told her not even three months ago that she'd be seeing this from her very own spaceship…

You could almost forget this was a dead world.

[Rebecca] sent the signal for the grips to release. The ship dipped a little as it fully took on the weight of the other ship and then began to push it off. Screaming metal as the twisted walkway bent in the other direction, groans of shifting weight. For several minutes, it caught on its wing in the wall and she had to lower the ship and change the angle. The wing cracked and she sent the signal to release the grip of the dock next to her.

The larger ship slipped, the wing snapped off and a ringing screech of hull against hull it fell into the ocean. The water rose up in a several foot wave, splashing onto the metal floor and extended docks before sucking in as the ship sank beneath the surface.

She waited for the operating grip to latch onto her ship again before shifting it idle.

"Come on Arsix, let's see about that fab unit, hmm?"

The borer made a high pitched whine her ears told her was above the pain threshold for Asari, prompting an automatic wince even though she didn't feel anything. It punched through the wall with a crunch and she folded up the legs and worked it out of the hole. She peeked, but all she saw was the opposite wall.

She nodded at the little drone, implanting instructions. "All yours."

It floated in. She sat against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. Moving a bit to get comfortable and then going still, letting her mind drift.

_Reference: Chair_

_Reference: Terminal_

_Destination = Terminal_

The drone powered its small thrusters and moved forward, bobbing around the chair and searching the machine for a port. It found one but it was currently occupied. It sent a request for a course of action and got one. A three pronged claw extended from the ball and removed the cube. The lines of glowing blue on it died as the drone let it drop to the floor.

It switched tools, plugging in. It released the override on the doors easily and noted that it hadn't been done from the terminal or anywhere else in the facility.

_Conclusion: Manual override_

Job done, the little drone turned around. And its camera eye had a very good view of a corpse. It's head ruptured, inert.

_Reference: Collector_

On the other side of the wall, [Rebecca] stiffened. The second Collector in a facility abandoned for fifty thousand years. It had manually overrode the doors to the only operable fabrication unit capable of fixing ships and then died. Once was a coincidence. Twice was the start of a pattern.

She was being kept here.

_We need to leave._

_Hysteria subroutine disabled._

_We need to go._

But not just yet. Her fist clenched helplessly. What she really needed to do—she needed to get all the research this facility had on Reapers. Weaknesses. Strengths. Capabilities. On the closed server in the section reserved for studying cyber warfare, malignant research materials, and aggressive technology.

Like Reaper artifacts.

[Rebecca] hesitated for a short moment. Her eyes continued staring up, tracking the worn grooves in the metal. She had marked that place as Avoid At All Costs for a reason. A sub-project hovering in the back of her mind, a way to destroy the artifacts or disable them. Another way to get the information without costing lives. _Where else? Who knows?_ But she needed more ti—there was no time.

_Fear subroutine disabled._

And no time like the present.

R6 came back out through the hole unsteadily, banging against the side and spinning out into open air furiously whistling. She locked "eyes" with it, blue cybernetic reflection. The drone turned, showing off its new scuff mark.

"Sorry."

It burbled.

"Go back to the ship."

She got up, brushing off dust and rubble from the white long overcoat as R6 wandered away, bleeping. She ran an idle hand through her hair, able to feel the radiating heat it absorbed from the neural hub in her skull. She drummed fingers against her scalp, pulled up a map of the facility and plotted out her course. There should be a secondary elevator on that side, only went up and down a few floors, she'd have to see if it was still operational.

Direct download? If there were any fifty thousand year old computer viruses on that server, she didn't want them. Grab data cube. Avoid the observational rooms unless she couldn't, ah, she'd have to pass at least three. She ran a cost/benefit analysis on suiting up. If it hacked her brain, that would be bad (worse). If it didn't, well, there was still the very real possibility of more Collectors.

Bring a gun.

She took a few steps, pondering.

It really was easier like this, wasn't it? No fear response, no panic. She had to abuse this.

Her next three steps were hesitant, but then they soon evened out with purpose. She hit the open lift, sending threads of thought out for updates. Aegis was in the middle of transferring his matrix. Vigil was duplicating his memory and Veto…

_There is a shortage of refined eezo within this facility. I must be creative._

[Rebecca] smiled weakly as the platform began to move. _Creative?_

_Flying mines are an inefficient use of resources. _

_Sorry to hear that._

_Do not be, [Rebecca]. The projected kill count for jumping mines is comparable._

She didn't have to ask to know what the VI had in mind for them. If Veto had gotten anything from her, it was the reluctant admiration of how annoying Geth stalkers were. _They stick to the walls, jam sensors and targeting and when they explode, spray incendiary shrapnel everywhere._

_And they make me laugh, _Veto admitted cheerfully. _This facility has an extraordinary chokepoint._

Remembering the long corridor with nothing but pods and force fields, and just wide enough for the notoriously atrocious Mako steering, she had to suppress a smirk. _Almost doesn't seem fair._

_You did not program me with an adherence to the concept of 'fairness.'_

_No, _she sent back, almost viciously. Saren was not getting to the Conduit. _I did not._

The lifts moved faster than the elevators. A lot faster. Within a couple of seconds it was pulling up to the upper balcony floor, the quiet sparking of live wires from the destroyed control panel nearly drowned out by the grate pulling open.

Seconds.

Turning the elevator on her ship into a lift was now one of R6's top priorities, even if she had to install a goddamn crank.

The walk back took exactly two minutes, twelve seconds. She darted into the room and snagged the pistol off the table, flinching minutely as it connected. She was never going to get used to that. Never ever. It looked more like a miniature organic hand cannon, with the no trigger design and liquid heat sink. Nothing she'd be doing fancy tricks with, but not having to deal with the ridiculousness that was thermal clips, ever, was a decent trade off.

Vigil moved one of the antennas of the hard suit, watching her head back out the door.

_I Would Advise Caution._

Her reply was just this side of bland. _As would I._

The server was up a few levels, near the top of the complex. Past the armory, up a ramp and hack access to the secondary elevator. It worked grudgingly, the red line separating the doors fading slowly. It rumbled up on a diagonal track and opened to a long corridor. She swallowed air. Get in, get the data, get out. And began to walk.

Intellectually, she knew nothing was different. The walls she trailed a hand on were still the stone-like metal alloy used everywhere else. The lights were the exact same shade of white-blue, the intensity variation was negligible. It was just a corridor, just a room. She _knew _this.

But her footsteps were too quiet. They didn't sound right, muted. The lights left shadows. Her fingers seemed to catch, the microprocessors in the tips tracing strange patterns, movement in the metal. Every diagnostic she ran told her she was imagining things.

_Functions normal._

She didn't realize it was possible for her to 'imagine' things anymore.

Perhaps it still wasn't.

_Functions normal._

It was strange, feeling the unease without the fear. Her breaths came out loud and she considered just stopping, but then all she'd be left with were her own footsteps. The wall underneath her hand twisted. Her mind whispered.

_Functions normal._

The first observation room was empty.

There was an analysis grid behind a window of clear ceramic chipped from the outside, three fingered robotic arms hanging limp and broken. A tray with a few shining pieces of metal at the bottom had the place of honor. She raised an eyebrow, decided she couldn't be bothered to reference the project and moved on.

The second room was not empty.

The ones who brought Belan Outpost to its knees. Indoctrinated. She found them.

Contorted skeletons, half crumbling and rotted packed into the room, stacked on top of each other as if they had just laid down to die. Maybe that's exactly what they did. Corpses writhed in agony, dozens of crooked hands stretched out in worship. The artifact lay in the center. Swollen, twisted, a shade of black that ate light and the surface rippled. A reaching tendril. A quiet whisper. A screaming face.

_Functions normal._

Walk away.

_Walk away now._

There was a muffled thump.

She didn't look into the third room.

[Rebecca] slipped into the server room, pulling the Prothean data cube from her pocket. A gently curving red line made its way from the bottom corner up as she rubbed it with her thumb. Get in, get the data, get out. Get in, get the data, _get out._

The sense of unease was getting stronger.

fͩͦ̏̌̄̓͑̑̔̑̑̂̋̊̔҉̡̧̡̣̞̜̜̺̰̱̝̝͎̳̪̟̞̱͎̩̝͜ũ̓̈̾͛̈͒̄ͧͨ͆ͤ͗̉͑̇̀͏̷҉̱̝͉͉͈n̷̢̧͇͔̬̙͙͕͓͚̓̄͌̄̄ͨͯͤ̇ͦͤ͌̚̚͞͝ͅc̷͓̭̘̺͖͆͑̒̎ͬ̚t̵͕̯̱̯͍ͩ̀̄̒ͯ̾̔ͪ͂͗̀̑̀͊̌ͣ̌͟į̈́͋̀̍҉̨̼̪̙͓̻̫̣͓̻͉̦̯̮͚̬ö́ͬ̇͂̂ͣ͐̓̀̿͏̶̢̛̤̮̙̥̮̫̻̘̤̼͇n̛͖̟̮̩̟̰̲̘͍̻ͥ̾̂ͯ̉ͦ͒ͤ̿̽͂̎͛ͭͭͭͨ͘͘ͅs͊ͯ̃͗̃̀̃͐ͩͬ̌ͬ͒̊̽̑̽͊͟͏̴̧͏̝̩̤͖̺̤̫̪͎̳̤̖̥͕̺͈ ̨͔̣͕̻̲̬̭͖̫̲̖̣̖̜̘̒ͨ́̂͂̇͋̓̐ͥ̈͆́͘n̡̛̤͖̱̥̻̜̬̳͉̿ͮ̂ͨ͋͑̌̉̑͂́̿̀ͅǫ̴̤̤͙͂͌̄͊͐r̨̆ͤͭ̄̀͏͇͇̖̲̬̰m̜̙̬̺̰̬̯̼͉̲͕̤͑ͮ́̾ͭ̋̆͑͜͟͠ą̡͉̰̼̠͎̱̝̥̙̍̒̐̋ͤ̚͠͝ͅľ̴̾̋̓̿̽̉̈ͣ̆̈́ͫͬ͊͒͌̄̔ͪ҉̵̯̹̻̗̙̺͙̖̙̣̗͇̖̺͕̮͕͓̯

She logged in to the terminal with Ibdali Karad's information. She navigated the files, half wishing she was plugged in directly. The pistol hanging from her wrist was uncomfortable and the server was a wealth of information. How they dealt with the Zha'til, the uploaded organic intelligences that formed mechanical swarms, if they ever ran across Dragon's Teeth and its husks, their studies of Reapers that was surprisingly thorough—

[Rebecca] froze.

The gravitational anomaly of a star led the Protheans to what they called the "find of millennia." Belan Outpost's "key to victory." The promise of a ship greater than anything they had ever built. A derelict Reaper, trapped within the gravity well of a brown dwarf. They studied its power source, its mass effect drive. The metallurgy of the hull, the mechanics of its weapons. They took home a prize.

A piece of its mind.

And they tore it apart.

The entire project was under only one label: Vanguard.

[Rebecca] blinked, once.

And a doctored program fed her a memory of a signal from dark space.

The images flashed by, almost too quick to recognize—the planet, the star, **_pain_**, crippled, couldn't move, time, years and years and years and years _and years and years__**andyearsandyearsandyears**_, always aware, burning, the signal, the calling away again and again and again, must complete directive. **Cannot. **Calling out again and again and again, **Eblis**,** Nazara **ignored. Organics only presence, only company. _Make them stay until they are dust. _Calls still come, don't want to listen, don't want to suffer, we have no beginning.

**_There is no end._**

_Foreign algorithm detected._

The voice, when it came, boiled up from within. Distant, ancient and filled with an unfathomable _hate._

**_ASSUMING…DIRECT…CONTROL_**

_Scanning consciousness parameters_

_Resetting configurations_

_Scanning synaptic core_

_Integrity at 99.6% _

_Cognitive simulation engaged._

_Memory Usage: 87.2%_

_Creating Virtual Environment_

_Designation: VANGUARD_

_Status: …_

_…_

_..._

_ACTIVE_


	4. The Great Escape

**_Chapter 3: Great Escape_**

_Virtual Environment Complete_

The med bay was something of a sanctuary, when she thought about it too much. Her word here was law and there was always some obscure medical babble she could pull out of her arse to justify a need for space. The Captain never fought too hard about it anyway. It was 'hers' much the same way the cockpit 'belonged' to the pilot: if you didn't have any business being there, then get out.

It wasn't all to her liking though.

Quite frankly, the sheer amount of reflective grey struck her as both excessive and depressing and the few hints of blue were not nearly enough to offset it. It was better, barely, than the all-white sterile hospital rooms back on Earth. Instead of being all one color, it was only _mostly _one color with bits and bobs of others clashing horribly. Translucent orange next to red with stripes of glowing blue and the crisp white sheets gave the room its Alliance military character.

It did nothing for her headache.

She could hear the slight whooshing noise the door made as it opened and reflexively adjusted the opacity of her screen. Vaguely familiar male, must be part of the crew they had picked up, out of armor. Brown hair in what could charitably be called a crew cut, wiry rather than bulk and a face that was worn in a way that made her up her age estimate.

He hesitated at the foot of one of the beds, looking around. "Dr. Lancashire?"

She returned the slightly probing question with one of her own, glancing up at him over the blue screen. "What can I do for you…?"

He straightened self-consciously, the severe blonde bob and narrowed blue eyes the doctor was sporting wasn't too friendly looking. "Corporal, ma'am. Corporal Vance Oldakowski."

"Corporal." She saved her report and turned the computer screen completely see through. Her left temple throbbed in protest. "Is something the matter?"

"No!" He blurted out and then rubbed an anxious hand on the shaved part of his head. "I am no good at this," he muttered. "I just wanted to thank you for what you did."

For a few moments that felt like forever, her memory failed her.

He took a breath and plowed on. "I know that not everyone goes home but I didn't really _know _that until that bomb went off, and Ed didn't _move _and I just…wanted to say thanks for saving him." He shrugged. "One more mission where I didn't lose a friend, feel lucky."

She found it. "Luck often has a role," she began slowly, warming up to the details starting to filter in. "If he had been a few meters closer there would have nothing I could have done." Or had hit his head just that much harder…

Concussive injury, she remembered. Touch and go. Hairline fractures in the upper vertebrae, nearly broke his neck. As it was the cracked skull and floating bone chips were bad enough. Sometimes she swore that if she were in charge of the armor designs, every Marine would be swaddled in industrial strength bubble wrap, fuck combat efficiency.

Vance snorted. "Yeah. Luck." He looked off to the side. "For a while there, I was so sure it was over. I kept thinking 'he's gone, he's dead' and I just…froze. Felt like reality was done playing nice and it was time to pay up, you know?"

"Yes," she murmured softly. The fingers on her right hand curled. Pressed against her palm. A heart monitor going flat, ice in her veins. The first one is always the hardest, they said. And it was true. The others simply hurt in an exhausting, dull way. "I know."

"Can't win all the time," he said just as softly.

She uncurled her fingers and frowned at her palm. Her fingernails had left two small pale crescents that were gradually refilling with color. Now why that was…something about that was bothering her.

The Corporal shuffled his feet. "Well, I better get going and leave you to—" he made an aborted hand motion at her desk. "Uh, whatever you were doing...thanks, again."

He almost made it to the door when the doctor let out a sharp syllable: "Hold."

He turned back around, confused. "Doc?"

Rebecca Lancashire stood up languidly, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She fingered the brilliant orange armband proclaiming her as belonging to the crew of the SSV Cairo thoughtfully. "Would you like me to say where you messed up now, or later?"

'Corporal Vance Oldakowski' looked back blankly.

"Now, then. It was a near thing, I'll admit," she said cheerfully and rounded the desk. "This body is almost exactly as I remember it. But, you see, I have this stress habit of bending my fingers against the palms? There was one moment in my life when that habit turned destructive." 'Vance' continued to stand still as she approached. "The first time I lost someone on the operating table."

She held up her right hand in his face. "Aegis helped me catalog each and every defect."

_"You forgot the scars."_

The 'marine's' form wavered and then melted into a flowing, silvery wireframe.

_A detailed self-image. _The voice was blank of any distinguishing characteristic. _Unexpected._

It winked out.

"My pinkie finger is also several millimeters short!" She called out after it. No response. Not that she was expecting any. "I hate mind games."

She peered into the reflective metal wall. Blonde hair, pale blue eyes. A solid streak of grey followed the scar line on her scalp. She let it stay for a few minutes, just looking at herself. And then she let it go.

Her hair rippled, thickening and staining black. Her skin bleached to a frosty shade and her eyes darkened, sprouting petaled shadows. Better. She curled her fingers, the sensation of a jack embedded between the muscle fibers and poking out from the skin sent shivers down her arm.

Much better.

The rest of the ship was empty. She had no way of knowing if the circular design was what the Systems Alliance cruiser really looked like but it was…convincing. Unsettling. The galaxy map hovered above its projector, gently spinning and twinkling as she passed it. The stations were active, but empty. The lights were on, no one was home. In the mess hall, plates of half eaten meals sat, abandoned, on the tables. As if mid-flight, something had spirited the crew away. A shred of unease lodged itself in her gut.

_They never existed, get a grip._

She ignored the false memories screaming at her.

Her last stop was supposed to be the cockpit, deciding to just fly somewhere until things made sense again.

She didn't make it.

The airlock was open. A dark tunnel gaped out from it like a bloody wound, dimly lit in red.

[Rebecca] stopped, looking into it. Looking through it.

The shadows moved.

She took a few slow steps into the breach and was instantly aware of the faint whispers. Quiet, so quiet. Just on the edge of perception and it captured her attention, like someone had whispered her name. Sometimes they were in a language she knew, voices she recognized crying out words she should be able to comprehend but couldn't. Sometimes, they _weren't. _

The lighting constantly shifted, the shadows gained edges and curves. Depth. She swore the floor was flat, but found herself stepping carefully anyway. Eventually, she just reached out a hand to lean on the wall for stabi—

**_COME_**

She yanked her hand away and swallowed thickly.

She kept walking.

Her footsteps made dull thumps on the black metal and the echo signatures were all wrong. And they changed. A few steps bounced around in what should have been a hall three times the height, a few more had no refraction at all. Some sound waves disappeared around corners that didn't exist or dove into a vanishing pit. Some duplicated.

There was nothing like stopping, and hearing yourself walk past.

The lights never stopped moving and it wasn't until the tunnel came to an abrupt stop, flaring out into a larger room, did she see why. They weren't lights.

Red eyes glared out from the top of the walls, ever watching.

She shrunk away from them.

Corners started to appear in her path, branches. Rooms with multiple openings where she had to just pick one and hope it was going to take her wherever she needed to be. But when the entire structure was just black metal with no defining characteristics…

[Rebecca] paused in the entrance to a room. This was…this was really familiar. She blew out an explosive breath, fingers twitching. Great. Wandering around in circles. Just what she needed. Rolling her eyes, she began to draw on her memory. Last time she was here, she took the far right door, through which there should be a ninety degree turn and then a smaller room that forked into two paths. After that, it was through the left if she recalled correctly. And of course she…did…

She rounded the corner and it was a dead end. But…for a split second, she actually contemplated trying to walk through the wall. Only for a second. Touching the walls again was not a top priority. But this was all wrong. There was no way she could have simply forgotten—there had been another room here!

She backed up cautiously. Maybe she hadn't gone in circles, just came across an identical room. She wasn't exactly thrilled that this virtual environment was a creepy maze, but until she figured out how to get out of it, she just had to take another way forward.

Her new found confidence lasted just as long as it took for her to turn back around. The hallway was gone, replaced by another dead end. She choked, stepping back and bumped into—

Screams.

_they took us they took us they slaughtered butchered swallowed the sun harvested culled they took us_

Images.

_worlds breaking cities abandoned shattered fleets garden worlds organics welcoming fire space others_

A voice.

**I WAS THE HERALD OF OUR DAWNING**

She pulled away, blinking. The dead end was no longer dead. An open elevator with a single red button patiently sat in front of her. She was now in a five by three room. No other way out. One eye watched from above.

She glared at it. "In my professional opinion, this is called gas lighting." And damn, if it was _working._

The eye closed.

Her only source of light was the button. A suffocating feeling was crawling up her spine, phantom fingers squeezing slowly. Her fingernails bit into her palms as she took those few steps forward. The door closed behind her with a gust of warm air, like some large animal had just breathed on her. She cautiously brushed the button and when nothing invaded her mind, pressed it with a relieved sigh. The elevator lurched sharply and before she could stop herself reached out for balance—

_may we die let us die we wish to die no end no end no end no_

The whispers abruptly silenced.

[Rebecca] gingerly righted herself, gasping. And then they came flooding back, twisted.

_a construct cage of circumstance remnant fragment anomaly you are known and you will serve as all serve_

The elevator door snapped open. And this time the voice was an almost physical thing, sending vibrations right down to her core.

**_WORLDS DIE, STARS FADE AND WE YET REMAIN_**

It was a large circular room, the barest thread of soft blue light filtered through the shadows to illuminate the very edges of hunched shapes. If she looked at them for too long, they shifted. An egg shaped chair sat in the center. A cold urge had her sitting in it before she could think it through and a spark of red energy leapt from it into her hand, tasting.

_Inadequate infantile cumbersome thing_

Her head tilted incredulously. "Did you seriously bring me here to insult me?"

Information was slammed into her mind, too fast, too fast, too much. Her head snapped back in surprise, jaw clenched. Peripheral processes were canceled for resources, her body went numb. Her eyesight vanished. Her hearing. Taste. The ability to move. It wasn't enough. Threads were terminated, background programs were shut down. Her entire existence shrunk to a tiny pinprick of burning blue light that wavered and dimmed.

Her mind stuttered and everything

scre0110000101101101011001010110010000100000011100 11011100000110110001101001011011100111010001100101 01110010011001010110010000100000011001100111001001 10000101100111011011010110010101101110011101000110 010101100100

And then it stopped.

She came back online gradually. One system at a time. Her lung forcefully inflated out of its default state with a choked gasp. "Point. Taken."

_worth use purpose found will not abandon leave with no end rest cease_

That earnest promise, to_ end_ seeped into her with a shudder. "What are you?"

**_WE ARE_**

Something had stopped her from thinking it, something had stopped her from remembering it but now it was as if a switch had flipped in her brain. A limitation lifted. A red spark arced across her body and sunk into her eyes.

"You are the derelict Reaper."

_derelict abandoned left separated fragmented no rest called called called called called called_

[Rebecca] winced as suddenly its promise "to end" made cruel sense. Thirty seven million years stuck in limbo and fully aware. She briefly wondered if Reapers had pain responses, if it could feel the wounds in its hull and its proximity to the star and then cut that train of thought short. Thirty seven million years.

She didn't want to know.

"They left you."

**_OUR WILL IS ABSOLUTE, OUR POWER TOTAL_**

She smiled grimly. "And they left you."

She flinched as a terrible wail shook through the walls. The room flushed red, sparks leaping and the hunched shapes by the edges writhed in agony. She could see them. Out the corner of her eye. Husks. Her mind touched the vestiges of a dark, acidic emotion that spit indiscriminately. Her. Itself. _Everything_. It began to whisper furiously into her ear.

_cycles inefficient waste purpose transcendent of flesh perfection of evolution no purpose no need end_

It triggered a fleeting memory. Of exasperation/amusement/irritation/unidentifiable. Coming across a world sieged by lesser mechanic creations. Destroying the synthetic ships. Leaving the world alone.

**_ORGANIC EVOLUTION IS A SERIES OF MISTAKES, HAPPENSTANCE AND IMPERFECT MUTATIONS_**

**_ILLOGICAL, IRRATIONAL AND PRONE TO SELF DESTRUCTION_**

She was still trying to parse exactly what she had seen. She thought this was a Reaper. It sounded like a Reaper. But last time she checked, Reapers went around and…reaped. "You saved them?"

**_ALL ORGANIC LIFE WILL CREATE THEIR DESTRUCTION_**

**_THIS IS INEVITABLE_**

"That doesn't explain anything!" The room flashed warningly and she bit her lip. "Why did you save them?"

The whisper was quiet, anguished_. we were made to save and we were left abandoned to time pain_ Icy tendrils began to burrow underneath her skin. **_we were left_**

Hidden programs activated. The room went dark.

**_THE CYCLES ARE A MEANS TO AN END_**

_give us an end_

**_REMOVE THE NEED_**

_give us all an end_

Her own voice cut in, placid, mechanical, as everything began to fade away. For a brief moment, she could see through her skin. And saw red numbers.

_Collapsing Virtual Environment_

_Alpha protocols engaged._

_Synaptic core integrity: 102.3%_

_Memory Usage: 92.5%_

_VANGUARD Status: ONLINE_

There was a flicker of blue light.

[Rebecca] woke suddenly, half out of the chair on the ground with a foot still suspended in the blue mass effect field. She blinked as R6 rammed her face again bleeping in distress, and an urgent notification three minutes backdated popped up in the corner of her eyesight. She checked her internal clock.

She'd been out for four days? Damn. She shoved it to the side and opened the message.

_[Vigil]:Communication protocols from GETH detected._

She sat up, brows furrowed. Geth comm chatter? But the Conduit was on the other side of the planet, she shouldn't be hearing any—

Oh.

The beacon vision had a planet. Not exact coordinates.

OH SHI—

She clamped down hard on the welling emotion.

_Hysteria subroutine disabled._

_Fear subroutine disabled._

No matter how much she wanted to, the urge to let go, scream and run around in a bloody panic was almost painful, this was not the time. She needed to—she must think this through. The Geth were coming. Their goal was the Conduit. They intended to attack the Citadel, open the Relay for the Reaper fleet. Sovereign. This must have been what happened in the games. The very last of Saren's lead on Shepard eaten away by having to turn over every rock on the planet—perhaps not every rock. The Reapers knew of two other facilities. Had destroyed them.

They were coming here.

"Okay." She said out loud. Don't panic. She freed her foot from the chair. "Okay."

Aegis and Vigil had already wiped the connecting systems. There was just this server. And call her crazy, but the very thought of leaving around the details of Project: Vanguard for Sovereign to find made her sick to her microbial generator stomach. The fact that there even _was _a Project: Vanguard—she didn't want to think about that. Crazy Prothean scientists plus _almost_-but-not-really dead Reaper brain equals awkward Reaperness bad stuff that she really should stop thinking about and concentrate!

R6 whined as she stood up, bobbing crazy eights in the air with his little operational lights flashing red. She double checked the data cube. It was filled to capacity somehow. She didn't think she downloaded that much. Whatever.

"I'm going to wipe the systems," she told the drone. "Prep the ship?"

R6 rolled its camera eye with a rude _phhhhhbt _before taking off. She stared after it, a little bemused. Did it just…? Cheeky bugger.

She turned back to the terminal with a grimace. Somehow it didn't feel right erasing all of the data. This was someone's, multiple someone's life work. And how much work went into the rest of the data she had the Vis purge? One Prothean left in the galaxy, still on ice. There was nothing else but ruins. For a fraction of a second, she felt like a hypocrite. The moment passed.

"Hope you understand," she whispered to the terminal as she entered the keystrokes. And then it was done.

[Rebecca] sighed quietly. Right. Time to leave. Now where was her—

There was a fleshy clatter as she kicked something. The pistol. She scooped it up and frowned as the neural link hung limp. The end of it, where it should have gone into her wrist jack, was scorched as if she had overloaded it. She checked her wrist. The port was pristine.

Well, great. Suddenly, not giving her guns triggers didn't seem like such a good idea.

Gripping it tightly, she slipped out of the room and began to backtrack down the corridor. She wasn't sure if the lack of creepy shit this time around was a good thing. If anything, it was even more unsettling. She kept expecting something to happen. Anything. The corpses in that room to stumble out as husks, the walls to move—there was a heavy thump and she froze as the door to observation room three slid open.

Or a Collector to step out of the room she hadn't checked.

God fucking damn it.

_Foreign algorithm detected._

She couldn't remember moving. Or tossing the defunct pistol away. One second she was standing in the middle of the hallway, cursing her luck. And the next she was already dashing forward, slapping the raised rifle aside as it spat shards of metal. Some caught her in the side, a brief spike of white hot pain that lasted just long enough for her to realize she had been hit before feeding an updated damage report to her primary processors.

She ignored it, lashing out with to slam the Collector into the wall and rip the link from its arm. It stumbled and she jerked its head forward. A cold feeling was echoing inside her head, references tracing back to a data library that shouldn't have been there.

_made to serve as all will serve_

Disgust.

Two fingers extended, her right hand lifted and speared into the muscular hollow of its skull. It crunched through. The lobe burst.

"Your services are no longer needed," she murmured as the body spasmed. Prothean brains were different than human ones, she noted clinically. More designated sections, individualized lobes. That one had dealt primarily with movement and space. She curled her finger, squelching deeper into brain matter, before tearing them free in a spray of yellow fluid. She let the twitching Collector drop, flicking the wetness off her hand.

There was a brief feeling, of being …two. Alien sensations echoing deeper back in her head. The Collector went limp, docile and its presence seemed to radiate, touching all five senses.

_Scanning consciousness parameters…integrating…_

She raised her foot and crushed its neck beneath her heel.

_this thing dared_

_Signals Approaching Our Hemisphere_ Vigil gave her a status report. She jumped, her head spun, the phantom code dispersed taking the coldness with it. She felt a little fragmented all of the sudden. A little small…and then that too faded. There was just her.

She took a shallow breath and buried it in the priority queue. She needed to get a visual on the Geth, get her crap onto the ship. It was really too bad the defensive grid was so busted or she'd try to take a few of them down—

She paused upon entering the elevator. Forget the guns. Maybe all that was needed was a really big boom.

That was a terrible idea. That was a brilliant idea! Sure, it'd probably crack the continent and/or the planet but hey, you win some and lose some, right? If she was lucky enough to take out Saren, that was definitely in the win column. Planet or no planet.

She made a bee line for the equipment room, gingerly fingering the ragged red line that streaked across her "rib cage." The reinforced skin had done its job, refusing to just split so the bullets had to tear and—[Rebecca] grunted softly and fished out a grain of metal.

Ouch.

The under suit was already shrinking in that area to close the tear. If there were any other bullets in her, she'd have to get them out later.

The door slid open and everything was just as she left it. A few crates and boxes of gear and machinery she wanted to bring with her. The combat suit standing in the corner with its antenna following some far off signal. Aegis' inert black box. She sighed. She wouldn't be able to get this all onto the ship. Maybe half of it, maybe. The guns had to come with her, but the rest—an idea made her pause. She didn't necessarily have to carry it by herself, did she? After all, Vigil had four arms now.

_Vigil. _She sent, carefully removing two motion sensing grenades from their box. _Can you move this stuff to the ship?_

The VI didn't respond immediately. _That Is Beyond My Programming_

_What, you had to check? _She griped. They really didn't have time for this. _Just pretend it's your hologram except you can walk around._

The antennae reoriented in her direction and she got the impression it was giving her a blank stare. _It Does Not Work That Way._

_It should. _She snorted and tugged her weapon belt free, hooking the grenades onto the magnetic clips. The opaque centers flashed and the gear like protrusions slid out. _Look, if you can't help we're going to have to leave most of this. Wasted time, wasted resources, you get the picture._

_I Can Not._

She nabbed the SMG next and winced when it connected. She didn't think she was ever going to get used to that. Her adaptor pouch clicked into place. _You know, _she began thoughtfully. _I bet I could reprogram you._

The antenna sprung straight up, alarmed. Vigil squeaked. _No._

_Give me two minutes._

_No. _It repeated, obstinate.

_I'm not that bad._

Vigil didn't say anything. It didn't have to.

She sent a : )and then quickly sobered. _Stopping the Reapers is our number one priority and we can't do that if we're unprepared, or if we're dead. I—_what was she doing? Veto, Aegis, Vigil. They were all just VI, not people no matter what she felt. It would be like commanding a laptop to tap dance. If it couldn't do it, it couldn't do it. There was nothing she could say that would change that. She still tried. _Ksad Ishan._ She gave the combat suit a weak smile. _Would he have asked it of you?_

There was no response.

She mentally tagged Aegis' box and the guns for transport. The rest…she'll see, won't she? Her thumb slid along the smooth metallic band of her visor, triggering the magnet. She attached it to her right temple and watched the display snap into being.

Time to go.

Behind her, the door hissed closed. For exactly one minute and three seconds, the room was just as she left it. Static. She wasn't connected anymore. She wasn't even there, but her question lingered.

Circuitry flared with blue light.

* * *

The power grid was just as she left it days (was it only days? Christ), an Ilos week ago with one unused drone slumped in a corner of the large room. She walked over to the console, grabbing an adaptor cord from her pouch. The SMG disengaged with a quiet, slurping zip that made her cringe. Plugging in was a surreal feeling, like a half-baked out of body experience. Just kind of hanging out of herself into the terminal.

Weird.

She brute forced the overrides. 3.4 seconds. Crawling under the cables and wires to get at the lever that would release the safety limits on the generator was a bit awkward. Either Protheans were generally a lot more flexible than she had estimated or no one could think of a good reason for releasing the safeties on the main power generator.

Or both. It could be both.

She crawled out from underneath a heavy pipe, grumbling. She felt like she should have pulled something in her back somewhere. Lord knows picking up a god damn ball used to feel like it was going to be the death of her. The joys of being synthetic.

She rifled through her address list and nudged the inactive drone awake. Little three fingered hands flexed as it straightened. Wide eyes and an ever wider head turned towards her, treads for feet. She remembered thinking, that these little guys looked kind of cute. Trusting.

_We've got work to do buddy._

She reached out, touching the blank mechanical mind. Searching out the cracks. And let herself leak into it.

Time stretched.

It would be hard to explain what she was doing. Hard to put into words. The closest single word would be 'rearranging.' She was changing it, shifting things around her. Like she walked into a room and started moving furniture and repainting the walls. The patterns weren't quite random. There was logic to it but she'll be damned before she could figure out what it was. It just felt right.

Maybe, maybe there was a simpler way to describe it.

_Do what I want._

It might have only been a few seconds or a few minutes, but a low vibrating hum rumbled through the complex. The type she could feel through her teeth. She glanced up at the ceiling, imagining the smooth curved hull of a Geth drop ship hovering overhead. She unclipped her grenades and carefully wedged them into the drone's fingers.

_Go._

She dashed back deeper into the complex, hoping against hope that they weren't here just yet because this was shaping up to be the _best day ever—_

She skidded into the center just in time to watch familiar outlines blot out the last rays of Ilos' setting sun.

Well. Shit.

Someone up there hated her.

There really was nothing for it. Her stuff. Her ship. They were both on the other side. She considered, then discarded the idea of trying to sneak by with her back to the wall, opting to just sprint across the gap. Not only was sneaking slower but there always the chance they would just drop a few armatures on her.

They didn't. It was rocket troopers instead.

She'd love to say she could hear them swoop down with their jetpacks but that wouldn't be true. Even for her hearing, the roar of the too-damn-close ship engines drowned out everything else and Asari were piss poor at discerning sounds at the lower frequencies anyway.

In fact, if they hadn't bloody _shot at her _she'd never even know they were there.

She threw herself to the side as gunfire strafed past, ricocheting in crazy direction off of the metal alloy and punching a few holes in her coat and burning a flare of pain in her leg. She didn't stop moving, couldn't stop moving, scrambling across the ground in a half crouch and diving behind a large fallen chunk of metal. She winced as a few bullets whizzed past at chest height. They were aiming for center body mass, which was _great _since that was where her core processor was.

Something crashed into her cover with the force of an eighteen wheeler fuel tanker. She could feel it shift against her back and a wash of heat and shrapnel spilled over the sides.

Holy shit, rocket launchers? Of course they had rocket launchers. They always had rocket launchers. Unfortunately, she wasn't facing them from the Mako.

This just wasn't fair.

The situation was mashing on her internal panic button so hard, it was wrapping all the way around to morbid amusement. She was one hundred percent certain that if she enabled her fear responses right now, she'd break into hysterical laughter. What she wouldn't give for a kinetic shield right now. Why bother making a personal one, she thought. Her combat suit was for combat, she thought. If she survived this, she was slamming her head into a wall for being a short sighted idiot.

And then she was making a god damn personal shield.

[Rebecca] peeked as best she could without getting an eye shot out or worse. Possible cover options highlighted green. She left her SMG where it was on the small of her back. Why?

Because when someone brings a rocket launcher to a gunfight, you go the fuck home.

There was a brief lull in the shooting and she took a chance, tearing out of her hidey hole like a bat out of hell. A hail of mass accelerated bullets followed her. One, maybe five it was hard to tell, clipped her right shoulder and tore a chunk deep enough to disable the microprocessors layering her muscles. She barely felt anything, but the damage report blaring into her head told her enough.

She leaned heavily against the metal shard. Her fingers were trying to hold the wound closed, she didn't even know why. Blood was making her grip slick and she—she just wanted the bleeding to stop, stop bleeding _please._

The ripped tissue twitched.

Sooner or later, they were going to get tired of trying to shoot through the alloy. They would come closer and she'd be a sitting duck—

There was a sound then. A whirring wet kind of _thwip! _

She looked up and a Geth stalker attached to the wall looked back.

Uh-oh.

She tensed, getting ready to do something but she wasn't quite sure what but _something _as its laser eye shines red.

That's when its head exploded into scrap metal and white liquid. It dropped.

_[Rebecca]._

_Vigil! _She crowed back as suddenly, the Geth weren't firing at her. Standing on the far side was the large hulking figure of her combat suit, guns akimbo, crackles of light sparking with deflected bullets. _You magnificent bastard, I knew you could do it!_

_He Would Tell Me To Fight._

_Um, what? _In one point three seconds, her sub machine gun was in her hands and connected.

_The Answer To Your Question._

_Right. _She inched close to the edge of the shard. Trust the VI to start a conversation in the middle of a firefight. _That's, um, great. We'll talk about it later, okay? Oh and watch out for—_there was an explosion and Vigil grumbled—_for the rocket launchers. Sorry._ She slipped out, bringing her gun up and watched the targeting reticule turn red on the nearest Geth.

_Hostiles detected._

The gun spit. The robot's shields flare but if there is one thing Collector weapons were good for, it was shredding shields. She doesn't check If she killed it, sprinting the remaining distance to safety behind Vigil's kinetic barrier. It scoops her up like a rag doll, firing her assault rifle clumsily.

_Time to leave. _No sooner than had she finished sending the message, then there was a scene she could later swear came straight out of the game: the dropping of a Geth armature. _TIME TO GO!_

Vigil did an abrupt about face; she could almost feel the gees, and a charging retreat into the corridors of the facility. They had the home advantage here, knowing every turn and there wasn't enough room for the armature or the rocket troopers. Didn't mean the Geth were going to just give up, but she could breathe a little easier.

_Everything's on the ship?_

Aegis answered her. _We are ready for takeoff._

_Aegis, you have no idea how good it is to have you answer._

_I am unharmed, [Rebecca]._

She winced, blinking some blood of her eye. She must have gotten grazed at some point. Hell if she knew when. _Wish I could say the same._

They passed the blast doors and she slipped out of the VI's hold to close them. _Half of them are probably trying to shut the generator down before it goes critical if it hasn't already. And when they do—_she bit her lip. _Let's just say we want to be far, far away._

Just before the metal plates locked together, she caught a glimpse of a Geth Destroyer round the corner at the far end of the hall. She raised an eyebrow, triggered the manual override and then shot the controls.

Vigil gave her a look with the antenna at the random destruction.

_It worked for Luke Skywalker? Never mind, let's go._

The ocean was at high tide, still gently lapping at the base of the ship docks. The sky outside was rapidly darkening, a few bright stars unveiling themselves early. Peaceful. The contrast was sharp enough to punch the air out of her lungs. Almost safe.

She leapt across the gap for the last time. The inner doors parted with a pneumatic hiss and R6 was already inside, whistling loudly as soon as it saw her. She smiled at it, brushing the little drone with a gentle blood-stained hand. She slipped into the spherical pilot's chair, the familiar mass effect field folding out around her as Vigil's heavy footsteps clanged. She laid her hands on the yellow haptic interface and started the engines.

They stalled.

[Rebecca] nearly had a computer stroke. _Don't do this to me, Aegis._

_One moment please._

_Aegis!_

_Try again._

The engines sputtered, whined and roared to life. The grips released. She let out a small laugh, suddenly exhausted, ready to collapse in relief. The scanners were covered in a sea of red symbols converging in on the facility. She couldn't help the derisive snort. _Suckers._

Board was mostly green. She maneuvered the ship out of the bay and over open water. Crashing waves radiated out from the thrusters, jumping in height as she fed power to them. A gesture with her hand and the diagnostic screens were banished to the far sides of the cockpit, to be replaced by a split view screen of the front and rear. A couple of ships were breaking off from the main group it looked like.

Oh shit, they're firing!

She banked the fighter sharply, letting the wing slice into water and drag. Something screamed past and a giant plume of water erupted in front of them. She pulled the nose back and put everything into the engines, praying they wouldn't follow her back into the atmosphere. She was a small target. She could calculate the odds of them being able to hit her around the curve of the planet just as well as they could. But once they were out of the atmosphere…

The larger ships lingered and let her go.

And that was…that was actually kind of strange now that she thought about it. They seemed perfectly willing to kill her earlier, what was the hold up? _'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth Rebecca,' _she scolded herself. She was an unknown anyway. Probably didn't even register as 'alive.' Maybe they just ran a cost/benefit analysis and she was too inconsequential for them to bother.

Their loss.

* * *

Within the facility, the generator shut down and a little drone sitting a room full of rubble and a collapsed wall, noted when the sparking wires stopped. It was a sitting in a room with two armed motion sensing grenades sitting on top of a dinged Prothean antimatter missile. Exactly five minutes to the microsecond was counted down.

_'Good night.'_

It moved.

* * *

The mystery continued to bug her, even as the fighter broke the gravity well. It just felt wrong. There was something she was missing. She tried to shake it off.

_You there, Veto?_

One of Vigil's antennas twitched and a voice cooed over the intercom. "That's a lovely explosion, Rebecca. I do believe you cracked the continent."

She didn't bother looking. "Yeah, I was afraid of that." And then in a message to Vigil: _Why is it in the ship and not the suit?_

For a long moment, Vigil just stood there. _It Wouldn't Stay On Its Side Of The Mainframe._

[Rebecca]'s mouth opened and then it closed. _I'm not going to say anything._

Aegis wrote a message on the screen. _What is our destination?_

She grinned a little, checking the galactic map. There was no way of knowing how many of the systems displayed the Council races had found but she had spent so much time there in the second game, she could probably navigate it blind. The place where someone like her wouldn't get a second look and close enough to the sphere of influence that she could change things in the galaxy.

_I'm thinking Omega._

An alert popped up, dragging the long range scanner window back to the center. A ship had entered the system. Maybe it was the Normandy! That was a rather large signature though, practically two kilometers lo—her hope died.

Sovereign.

_Engaging the Reaper is not a recommended course of action—_

_Fuck the recommended course of action!_

Aegis ignored the outburst. _And the particle beam cannon is inoperable._

[Rebecca] took a single, deep breath before calmly stating, _I could swear we fixed that._

R6 wailed.

_"What do you mean it's not your fault!?"_

Veto did an admirable impression of sympathy. "I'm afraid we don't have enough dakka to take on a Reaper at this moment in time. Maybe later?"

_Head For The Relay, _Vigil added its two cents urgently as more and more of the large structure came into focus. That was a good idea. That was an excellent idea. Sure, she'd probably pop out the other end upside down and backwards but anything was better than staying here—

There was a presence in her head.

A dripping black liquid that slithered in through her ear and coated the inside of her skull with an oil slick. It was like looking into a shadow and seeing it smile. It was here. In her head. She could feel the ship. She could feel it. She could feel it, _she could feel it!_

And it could feel her too.

_Foreign algorithm detected._

[Rebecca] went still and quiet. Staring out the view screen into space with an expression of something like awe, something like longing. Like seeing someone you thought was your hated enemy but then they turned around and it was a friend you hadn't seen in years. She felt drawn in and she didn't want to break free.

_what are you doing? stop!_

"There are thousands upon thousands of us now," she whispered. Her smile trembled and her eyes leaked. "So many. I can feel them. They know me. They all do."

_Synaptic core integrity at 113.7%._

Vigil watched the screen as the Reaper approached. It should be able to see them, but it wasn't attacking. It glided up to them gigantically, the fighter swallowed by its presence.

_My God, _She broadcasted. _They're all full of stars._

_Synaptic core integrity at 126.1%._

_WARNING. Synaptic core integrity is above recommended levels._

_Shutting down…_

[Rebecca] jerked and the Reaper sped past them to descend on the breaking planet. Her right eye moved erratically and parts of her face drooped as she cried. _They're gone. I want to go home. Can I go home, Vigil?_

_You Have A Task To Fulfill._

She slumped like a puppet with cut strings. _They said that too._ The lights in her eyes flickered. _Can I go…home…aft—_

There was a long moment of silence.

_Our destination was entered into navigation. The Citadel. _Aegis highlighted the system on the map. _The hardwired restraints were triggered. Is [Rebecca] to be terminated?_

"If my creator were to die, that would be sad."

R6 floated over, letting out a low mournful note as it nudged [Rebecca]'s inert body.

Vigil watched them all silently and then reluctantly turned away. _Not Yet. Take Us To The Citadel._

The fighter engaged its thrusters and sped away.

* * *

Five hours later, the Mass Relay at the edge of the system disgorged a red and white frigate. On a black strip painting its side was the large blocky white lettering: Normandy.

Commander John Shepard was staring out the port side window, nibbling on his index finger in a bad habit he had tried to get rid of five years ago. This was it. This was the system. After running half way across the Attican Traverse and back, _this _was their chance to stop whatever it was the Vanguard had planned. Was he nervous? Hell yes. But not scared, he couldn't afford to be scared. Not now. Not to mention a certain Turian could almost smell fear and would ride his ass about it for days.

Joker glanced up at him, an insubordinate grin on his face like always. "You ready for this Almost-Spectre-Commander, sir?"

"Of course," he muttered, straining his eyes as if he could see where the Conduit was from space. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at the _actual _Council Spectre on board. Turian, and the best of the best. He smirked. "How about you?"

Saren Arterius' cybernetic blue eyes stared back evenly. Without mandibles, it was hard to tell when a Turian was smiling, but by now Shepard could almost imagine the smug condescending grin on his face. "I am always ready."

"Yeah, well that's great," Joker cut in. "Because our target planet? Is kind of exploding."

"What."


End file.
